But Big Thunder was already spitting flame. Braced against the stream in a crouched professional stance, the huge cannon bucking in his two-handed grasp, Bolan triggered a series of Magnum exit passes the pilot's way.
The roar of the shots echoed thunderously off the rocky banks. The first of the punishing 240-grain boattails smashed the pistol from the Russian's grip and cored his wrist like a red-hot wire. The second, third and fourth lashed across his chest steel whips reducing liver, lungs and heart to a bloody pulp in less than a second.
The guy was dead before his gun hit the water. The body, flung backward by the colossal impact of the .44's slugs, punched out at 1640 feet per second, slammed against a granite slope on the riverbank, then slid into the foaming water. It vanished into a suckhole on the far wide of the waves, reappeared bobbing on the surface fifty yards downstream and was then swept away.
The wreck of the chopper was still blazing fiercely.
Bolan waded out of the water and rejoined Bjornstrom below the catwalk.
"Daylight or no daylight," he said soberly, "we have to get out of here fast." He nodded toward the roiling black column leaning away from the wind above the wreck. "Those guys will have friends... and it won't take an Indian brave to read that smoke signal."
The Icelander nodded in turn. He made no mention of the death they had so narrowly avoided. A strong man, Bolan noted, and one to be relied on in a tight spot.
Still, there were many questions left unanswered. A regular Icelandic civilian who just happened to be satisfying his curiosity? Who happened to own an Ingram? And who happened to be courageous enough to stand up and use it under fire?
But the mystery of Bjornstrom's real identity was a problem that could wait. It was enough for now that he was a friend. A friend in need, at that, Bolan reflected.
"From here," Bjornstrom told him, "we can safely continue even in daylight for maybe twenty miles. After the next bend there is a cascade, and then from high ground to the west a country road overlooks the river. Also there is an airstrip by Herdubreid."
"Say again?"
"The crater of an old volcano. It is at 5500 feet. There may be tourists at this time of year. They could overlook, too. The Russians will not dare attack on that section."
"Uh-huh. The only thing is..." Bolan paused. "Well, the kayak is strictly one-man transport. Especially in this kind of water."
"That is not a problem. I have my own boat."
"That's great. But where?"
"Below the waterfall. Maybe two hundred yards. It is in a cave, quite hidden."
"You're suggesting we continue in convoy?"
"Yes, if you wish it. I know the river well from a long time. With me you can make it more quickly. When it becomes dangerous again we shall hide and continue by night."
"Sure. That was my plan anyway."
"Then, after Grimsstadir and the lake... we make our own secrets, okay? We disappear until we can make the fjord and discover theirs!"
Bolan punched the Icelander lightly on the shoulder. "We're on our way...."
9
The boat was a powered rubber raft with a 25 hp Excelsior outboard tilted up over the stern. There was more than enough room for two, even with Bolan's supplies and the spare fuel jerricans.
But the Executioner preferred to stick with the patched-up kayak partly because he had no wish to be dependent on Bjornstrom, although the enigmatic Icelander had so far proved a reliable ally, but mainly because he was determined as long as possible to keep up the fiction of his self-imposed vacation task Bolan's priority was still to learn the identity of the guys who had decided to eliminate him. But to keep faith with himself was damned near as important. Mack Bolan was not the kind of man who would be content to leave a job unfinished.
There was, too, the matter of logistics. Two crafts would be more difficult for their enemies to destroy than one. Twice as difficult in fact.
With two they would have more freedom of movement, and that extra mobility could mean the difference between life and death.
Again, if one was destroyed and the supplies had been equally divided between them, they would not be left with nothing.
It did not even occur to Bolan that both might be destroyed.
As Bjornstrom had said, the twenty miles passed without incident. The river wound its way through narrow defiles, between high banks of volcanic shingle, at the foot of gorges channeled from the rock. They passed black sandbanks, mudflats bubbling with miniature geysers and tributaries of hot water, where the steam blew from the surface like spray on a stormy day.
Herds of wild ponies and an occasional pair of giant crows, riding the wind above the desolate landscape, were the only forms of life they saw until late in the afternoon. Then, far away on a track that climbed a huge mountain slope, they saw the antlike form of some vehicle laboring toward the crest.
Later, hang gliders, a trio of light aircraft and even a solitary ULM passed overhead, all of them presumably from the strip at the foot of the volcanic crater.
Before their ghostly journey through the gloom of the sub-Arctic night they were twice halted by what the tourist guides called "major waterfalls." Bjornstrom proved his worth once more on the first of these, where the widening river slid over a rock shelf to plunge forty feet or more into a foaming pool.
For two miles before the fall, the current flowed smoothly between vertical cliffs of crumbling basalt that towered higher every hundred yards. If the Icelander had not known intimately that reach of the Jokulsa a Fjollum and urged Bolan to disembark the moment the rocky banks closed in, the Executioner would have had to waste precious time backing up, because the eroded lava faces were completely unclimbable.
The second cataract was really a long and furious rapid class six; impossible.
In each case a portage was unavoidable, Bolan carrying his kayak and Bjornstrom humping the deflated Hypalon raft, with both men returning each time to fetch the outboard engine, which they maneuvered over the fissured rock between them.
Afloat again, and making good time toward Grimsstadir, they saw the same monoplane Bolan had twice before recognized, low beyond a bluff overlooking the river. But this ship came out of the thickening dusk in the north, not from the hilly ramparts buttressing the ancient crater.
"Keeping tabs," Bolan called to the Icelander. "My guess, once they've located us again, is some kind of surface attack at dawn, just before we pack it in for the day." Whatever else could be said about the killers, it had to be admitted they were punctual.
Their own rubber raft, Bolan guessed, must have been off-loaded upriver from a truck. It was a quieter, cleaner and closer method than another helicopter assault. Probably more efficient, too, in the long run.
It wouldn't have been too difficult for them, either, deciding where to make their launch. Between the reach where the spotter plane had last seen them and the Dettifoss Iceland's largest waterfall, a few miles downstream there was only one sector where two men and two boats could remain unseen during the daylight hours a long winding canyon where the river twisted through an extrusion of igneous rock that pierced the lava plateau.
Here frost and biting winds had hollowed huge caves from the cliffs, the rush of icy water below had sculpted granite and other rock that Bolan couldn't recognize into great curving overhangs that resembled petrified waves breaking.
Bolan and his companion were starting to stow their gear and settle down on the shingle beach at the far end of a lofty cavern when they heard the stutter of the Russians outboard.
There were five men aboard. Two of them carried Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols, another couple were armed with the latest model Uzi submachine guns. The helmsman, minding the engine, wore a webbing harness that supported a row of grenades and a holstered Stetchkin automatic.