Blood Heat Zero (3 page)

By eight o'clock he had checked out. Ten minutes later he was on the far side of the square, mending an enforced cognac hangover with strong black coffee in the breakfast room of the Hotel Thor. At nine-fifteen he arranged to rent a car with the help of the clerk behind the information desk at the Hotel Loftleider, half a dozen blocks away.

Bolan rented a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Colt Shogun. He chose the tough Japanese off-roader for two reasons: first, because he intended to drive a fair distance and he had heard that only the main Icelandic coastal route was paved most of the inland roads being at best surfaced with packed gravel and secondly because he wanted his planned showdown to be in an area so remote that even the dirt roads might not reach it.

Only then, Bolan felt, would he have the opportunity to bring them clear out into the open, confront them, and... yeah, make the bastards sing!

Maybe then, depending on their answers, he could convince them that he wasn't in the country on their account.

Unless he discovered they were into some nefarious activity that his conscience wouldn't let him leave be.

But that was something he could worry about after they talked. Right now the priority was to move.

He slung his luggage in back of the tall, compact Colt utility, filled up with gasoline and took the road north from Reykjavik.

He intended he told the young woman at the rental agency, just in case anyone was checking on him to take in the huge aluminum plant that was Iceland's only heavy industry and then follow the coast road as far as the port of Bogarnes. After that he would drive inland along the fertile Nodura Valley.

On the pretense of asking her advice, he contrived also to let her know that afterward he wanted to cross the bare central plateau, detour as far as the picturesque fringe of the Langjokull glacier and then head for Akureyri on the north coast. This was the country's second largest port, a few miles only from the Arctic Circle, and apart from the variety of Norwegian, Danish, Russian and Swedish shipping docked there, he could also visit the great Laxa hydroelectric complex.

This ultramodern super-power-station, thirty-five percent owned by Iceland's National Energy Authority, would be a natural draw for any engineer, as Bolan had told her he was.

The coast road was impressive, following the rugged cliff contours above a steel-gray sea. The sky was a pale cloudless blue, and it was quite warm. At any other time, Bolan would have relaxed, enjoying the unfamiliar scenery. But today it was the Shogun's wide-angle rearview mirror that claimed all the attention he could spare from the winding road ahead.

By American or European mainland standards, traffic was light. But there was a fairly continuous procession of cars, fruit and vegetable delivery trucks, and occasional buses traveling in each direction. Most of the vehicles were sturdy, Northern European makes Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, Swedish Volvos and Saabs which made it tough singling out any potential tail everything looked much the same.

It was not until noon, after he had suffered a conducted tour over the aluminum works and strolled the many-masted, herring-scented quays of Bogarnes, that Bolan was able to even suspect a possible tail.

A scarlet, diesel-powered Mercedes 300-GD a highbuilt, 4x4 utility not unlike the machine he was piloting had tucked in behind him some way south of the port. He had lost it in the narrow streets of the Old Town.

But when, after his walk half an hour later, he took the right-hand turn for Desey and the headwaters of the Nodura, the red offroader was there again. So was an Audi Quattro he had first noticed on the outskirts of Bogarnes and a Volkswagen Passat station wagon.

He lost the VW at Hvammur, but the other two kept position behind him, first one and then the other surfacing in the decreasing stream of traffic that lined up behind the Shogun and then passed.

Bolan was practically certain now... and then, when he made another right turn somewhere beyond a small town called Fornilvammer, hoping to find a trail that would take him near the glacier, he discovered that he was on his own.

For as far as he could see in the curved mirror, the narrow track unrolled emptily behind him across the bleak, treeless land.

The pursuers if pursuers they had been had given up.

Ten miles farther on he discovered why.

The trail petered out, while the ice cap was still no more than a shimmering line in the distance, in a rocky wilderness that had once been a lava flow a deserted plateau that was bare of vegetation and littered with shallow lakes. There was no turnout, no intersection, no alternative route; there was nothing to do but turn around and go back.

If either of those cars was following him, all they would have had to do would be to park near the original turnout and wait for him to come back.

And that was what they did.

After that they made no pretense that they just happened to be following the same route; they fell in behind the Colt, first the Audi, then the Mere G-Wagen, with a precision that was almost military, maintaining their exact distance at whatever speed the Executioner chose.

Bolan had a sudden disturbing thought. Could they in fact be military? Or at any rate the equivalent?

Iceland had no army, no navy, no air force, and only a small coast-guard service. Even the police numbered less than six hundred country-wide. But there could be some kind of security organization. Had his outlaw status somehow been flashed ahead of his arrival? Were they keeping tabs on him to see what the hell he was up to in their country? Had they connected him with the bodies at the hotel?

Unlikely. In that case surely they would simply have taken him in.

But there was also the possibility that one of the attempts on his life had been reported; maybe the authorities were checking him out, curious to know why he had not complained.

More likely still was the simplest explanation the goons on his tail were from the same outfit that had fouled up the earlier attempts on his life.

If that was the case, it suited the Executioner fine; that was just the way he wanted it.

Once they had been maneuvered into a position where he could gain the upper hand, he figured he would at least have a chance to find out what the hell went on.

Bolan made few mistakes in his tactical appreciations. This was one of them.

He led the procession toward Porosstadir and the long, narrow sea arm known as Hruta Fjord. Then near the village of Stathur, when the steely headwaters of the craggy twenty-five-mile inlet were already visible below the left-hand margin of the road, he veered away to the east, bumping over a stony track that spiraled up into the Vistur Hunavatus highlands.

The G-Wagen and the Audi followed, closing now.

Bolan accelerated, wheels spinning clouds of dust into the mountain air as he hurled the Colt around each curve.

Breasting the final rise, he jammed momentarily on the brake pedal. Ahead, the trail looped crazily down the face of an escarpment and then lost itself in a confusion of giant boulders far below. Beyond these scattered segments of rock a bare landscape stretched away in gentle undulations toward a line of ancient volcanic cones.

Bolan maneuvered the utility down the grade, zigzagging the rock face, showering stones and loose stone chips into the void at each twist in the track. He wrenched the offroader between the boulders at the foot of the cliff and steered out across a plain floored with coarse upland grass.

Two hundred yards behind, the G-Wagen bumped out from the dark and ragged outcrops in pursuit. But the rough ground proved too much for the Audi.

With a lower ground clearance, the powerful sedan tore the casing from its rear differential on a rocky projection and ground to a halt with a scream of ruptured metal.

Bolan grinned.

There was no doubt now that the followers two stalled in the Audi and three in the Mere, as far as he could see were out to get him.

Three hundred yards out from the escarpment, granules of toughened glass stung the back of the Executioner's neck as the rear window of the Colt exploded inward. Someone in the Mercedes had opened fire with an SMG or a machine pistol. Heavy slugs ripped through the fiberglass top and punched holes in the steel bodywork of the vehicle.

But the range was too great for accurate shooting, and in any case the grass, smooth enough from a distance, was in fact so pitted with small hollows, so studded with hummocks that no marksman could hope to score from a bouncing utility traveling at more than forty mph.

Bolan gunned the 4x4. Some way beyond a slight swell in the treeless surface of the plain he had seen a slash of brighter, more vivid green coloring the dun landscape. His plan, a sudden decision, depended on his ability to dip out of sight of the Mercedes for an instant before he approached that stretch of green.

A prehistoric stone monument stood on the crest of the rise. Three vast rock columns, topped by two equally heavy horizontal slabs, hid the Colt momentarily from view as Bolan swerved sideways and threw out his luggage.

Then he was rocketing down the far slope toward that bright green space.

And briefly, but for long enough, the pursuers dropped out of sight on the far side of the low ridge.

Bolan braked fiercely, opened the driver's door and dived out of the decelerating Shogun. He hit the ground, shoulder-rolled and came up crouching, sprinting for the shelter of a solitary rock that pierced the grassy slope.

The off-roader, picking up speed again, plowed on with its engine bellowing. A twenty-pound stone, harvested by Bolan in case of emergencies during his fruitless attempt to make the Langjokull glacier, weighted its acceleration pedal flat to the floorboards.

As the G-Wagen appeared over the crest, Bolan's mount was hitting the half century. Swaying giddily from side to side, it made the foot of the slope, shot up a small ramp and took to the air for more than twenty feet before it hit the jade-green surface of the brighter area.

The Colt didn't bounce. The green surface erupted. The utility, obscured by a curtain of color, appeared to be half engulfed. Slowly it began sinking from sight.

The flat green swath was no grassy upland meadow but a treacherous quagmire, one of the deadly bogs for which the interior of Iceland was notorious.

The Mercedes squealed to a halt on the fringe of the morass. Three men, unaware of Bolan's escape, got out. A driver and two gunners, as he had surmised. He was ready behind the rocky outcrop with Big Thunder, the stainless steel .44 AutoMag in his right hand.

He felt no compunction. These guys or soldiers from the same outfit had three times tried to take him out.

The driver stayed by the door of the G-Wagen. The two hardmen armed, Bolan saw, with Uzi submachine guns walked warily to the shelving demarcation line between the grass and the moss-green slime of the swamp. With trigger fingers at the ready, they eyed the slowly submerging Colt, waiting for its occupant to make some desperate attempt to escape.

Nobody emerged. The abandoned utility was already more than halfway under. As they watched, the obscene mass flowed in through the open door and began to fill the cab.

"Over here!" Bolan called from his hiding place.

The killers whirled, flame blossoming from the stubby muzzles of their Uzis.

A hail of lead flailed against the rock, shrieking into the sky as the multiple detonations lost themselves in space.

Bolan had hurled himself sideways. He fired two-handed, stitching a classic left-right-left figure eight across the bodies of the two hoods.

One died on his feet, with white splinters of bone pricking through the crimson ruin of his chest. The other, caught in the left shoulder, spun away, hurled backward over the morass by the demon impact of a heavy Magnum flesh-shredder. He splashed into the wicked slime... and fatally, instead of lying flat or trying to roll himself to the side, he panicked and struck out, some crazed instinct prompting him to head away from the gunfire, toward the sinking Colt.

Bolan could do nothing but watch him die. But before that he had wasted the driver of the Mere with a 3-shot burst that shattered the near window and let daylight into the killer's skull before he could free his Police Special from its shoulder holster.

The wounded assassin was quickly sucked under. His screaming face gurgled beneath the heaving slime; the last corner of the Shogun's roof squelched out of sight.

Bolan stood and went to examine the bodies.

Zero.

Negative as the corpses in the hotel room in Reykjavik gray coveralls with no labels, no identifying marks; no papers, no documents, not even a wallet. The one undamaged face was neither Oriental, middle eastern nor Mediterranean in type. Like the others it could have come from any country in Northern Europe.

The Executioner sighed. He reloaded the AutoMag, climbed into the G-Wagen and fired the engine. He drove back toward the wrecked Audi, stopping on the way to recover his luggage from behind the stone monument. A hell of a way civilization had come since they were erected, he thought bitterly.

Bolan hoped the other stranded gunmen seeing the red utility return would assume their prey had been eliminated in the firelight and their comrades were on the way back to report success.

But it was too much to hope for.

Maybe they could see that there was only one rider instead of three; maybe there was some signal he should have given. In any event they opened fire while the G-Wagen was still more than one hundred yards away.

That was their first mistake.

The range, again, was too great for the handguns they were using. They must have concentrated all the heavier stuff they had on the spearhead detail in the Merc. That was the second.

Their third mistake, fatal in any warlike encounter, was to underestimate the strength and determination of their opponent.

Bolan made no attempt to slacken speed, take evasive action or duck out of the fight. He drove the heavy Mercedes utility straight at the sedan, keeping an iron grip on the bucking wheel with one hand, pumping lethal .44 boat tails from the AutoMag with the other hand.