Long and thin, it had to be a ladder. He doused the light and began to clamber up the rungs, taking care not to let his feet on the metal give him away.
At the top of the ladder, there was the mouth of a second tunnel. He climbed into the higher tunnel and ran thirty yards into it. Flicking on the light, he tried to place himself by referring to the map. With no idea exactly where he stood, he'd have to find a marker.
He played the light along the wall, moving farther into the new tunnel. Somewhere, he knew, there had to be a sign. Something with a number on it. There had to be some key to enable someone inside the tunnels to locate himself. After another thirty yards, he found it. There was a small metal sign bolted into the wall.
It identified the tunnel he was in, and the section. With some careful scrutiny, he placed it on his map. He'd been heading toward the Hudson River. That was good and bad. Good, because it would get him closer to the place where Achison was supposed to land the chopper, but it also meant he was heading in the same direction as the reactor. He had no idea what the consequences would be if he was exposed to the draining coolant.
He had no idea how deep the water might get, or how much of it he would encounter. At the moment, he could avoid it by keeping to one side of the tunnel. The rivulet of water in the middle of the tunnel bottom might just be draining snowmelt.
If he was lucky. But he hadn't had much luck so far. The footsteps of the approaching man started to boom through the high mouth of the tunnel. Whoever it was it was getting closer. Glinkov doused his light and moved swiftly back toward the main tunnel. He had to move cautiously. He couldn't afford to run off the floor of this tunnel into the main tunnel. The drop was high enough to break a leg. And someone was chasing him.
Someone who wanted him dead.
Someone who was willing to see to it.
In his gut, Andrey Glinkov knew that Mack Bolan was right behind him. Glinkov had to get out of the tunnel. And Mack Bolan was determined that he would never make it. Glinkov was too uncertain of his path to outrun the pursuit. He had to stop and find out where he was from time to time. Glinkov knew that timing was his only hope. He couldn't outrun the people behind him. If he got where he was going and the chopper wasn't there yet, he was finished. If he got there and the chopper had come and gone, it was all over. But if he made it out while the chopper was still there, he had a chance.
As if from another world, distant echoes drifted through the network of tunnels. Barely perceptible, Glinkov had the brief impression that they might have been older than he was, the last dying sounds of a long-dead war. Or the last stand of his crew, hastily assembled as it had been. Idiots, most of them. How could he have expected to succeed with such incompetent help?
And in his heart, he knew it was a sham. He knew he couldn't truly blame his failure on the men who followed him. But it didn't much matter.
They were finished. If he survived, his version would be history. If he didn't, he wouldn't much care, either.
The footsteps stopped. Somewhere in the dark, not fifty yards away, a man waited. That man, if given the chance, would kill him. He didn't know the man's name. And it made no difference. He would have to kill him first, and there was nothing more anonymous, in the final analysis, than a dead man.
Glinkov held his breath. In the darkness, he could hear the whisper of running water. And the sound of rubber on metal. The ladder was being climbed.
Slowly, carefully, climbed.
Glinkov slid forward. His weapon clinked on the hard stone. There was a whisper behind him, his cuffs dragging on the concrete. He stilled his movement.
He waited.
The ladder thumped softly. The climber placed each foot carefully, quietly. But the care wasn't sufficient. The quiet, not enough. Slowly Glinkov rolled sideways. He could recall approximately where the ladder entered the tunnel mouth. It was on the left-hand side, extending just two or three inches above the lip of the opening. The Russian strained his ears. He heard nothing from farther off. Whoever else was following had either turned back or stopped, waiting to see what happened. The closer man hadn't been Bolan. Of that Glinkov was certain. It reassured him. But suppose Bolan had caught up? Suppose Bolan had switched places? Suppose it was Bolan climbing the ladder? Could it be? Could he afford to believe it wasn't? What the hell should he do?
The Russian asked himself a hundred questions. Time was running, just as surely as water ran in the tunnel below him. The seconds clicked off in measured rhythm as steadily as the water dripped on the rock behind him. And another step on the ladder.
Whoever was coming had a foot less to go. Glinkov placed his flashlight parallel to the barrel of his weapon. If he used the light, he had to be ready instantly to shoot at what he saw. Nervously he rubbed the slide switch on the flashlight. He moved his fingers side to side, unwilling to risk accidental illumination. And the stalker rose another rung on the ladder. That made at least four. One more, and his head should be above the floor of the higher tunnel. One more step, and he would risk the light.
Glinkov was silent. No one could possibly expect him to be there. Even Bolan would believe he was long gone. Running was the only sensible thing for him to have done. So, of course, he hadn't.
But the Russian knew that Mack Bolan was too experienced to make book on such things. It happened so quickly, Glinkov wasn't even sure who it was. He flicked on the light. The piercing eyes burning back at him scared him into an involuntary contraction of the trigger finger. In an instant the man was gone. The face dissolved in bloody spray and there was nothing but the pale, ghostly beam of his torch, dying just as it reached the opposite wall. The man's hair had been gray. The man had been Malcolm Parsons.
And Glinkov gave him credit. He would never have suspected the old man of having such nerve. He must have been mortified to have been so easily seduced. His vanity had gotten the better of him.
A less vain man would have left pursuit to the likes of Bolan. Too bad. But then a less vain man would not have been tricked so easily, would not have been in Parsons's predicament to begin with.
But was it really Parsons? Maybe the light had tricked him. Maybe the beam had been so close it had bleached Bolan's darker hair. Maybe the man he killed had been the Executioner. Maybe there was no Executioner to fear now.
It was tempting to hope so, to think so. And Glinkov held his breath, waiting for a sign. And he wasn't waiting in vain. And the sign came, and when it came, it chilled him to the bone.
"I'm coming for you, Glinkov." The voice was cold, brittle. Deep and resonant in the stony catacombs. He knew it was only a dream. Parsons was dead, after all. And Mack Bolan was on his trail.
The echo seemed to spread out in all directions.
Glinkov couldn't tell where Bolan was. He might be just below, waiting at the foot of the ladder.
Or he could be behind him, in the feeder tunnel, creeping up on him even now. Or maybe he'd gone on past the feeder tunnel, waiting for him to blunder right into his hands.
In any case, it didn't matter. It would soon be over.
Stan Robbins knew water was the only answer, lots of it. But first he had to do something about the temperature in the containment buildings. If it went any higher, the whole thing might blow.
He knew the tunnels to the Hudson were closed.
Even at gunpoint, he'd made sure those gates stayed shut. He'd snookered the Russian. Now he hoped he could snooker fate. With a prayer, he opened a second set of valves. The first step was draining the radioactive coolant from the bottom of the containment building. Then he turned on the pumps. He had to flood the reactor with new, fresh water from the river to get rid of the radioactive waste.
As it was, this place would be off-limits for some time while they tried to clean it up. But if he couldn't cool the core in the next few minutes, there might be nothing left to clean. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the warning lights blink on and off. Finally he saw what he was looking for. The blue light was on, indicating that the complete circuit from the Hudson through the containment building and on into the emergency tunnels was opening.