Although the one hundred rounds contained by the weapon are only 4.7 mm caliber they can be fired in 3-round bursts each lasting only ninety milliseconds and each capable of piercing a steel helmet at a range of five hundred yards.
Mack Bolan was familiar with the gun and its capability. In the present circumstances it was a welcome gift, particularly if there was going to be any action underwater. But its arrival, and the manner of that, was as mysterious as the rest of the events of the past few days.
"I don't understand," he said. "Who are you? How come Gunnar knew I would be here on this road at this time?"
Her name, she told him, was Erika Axelsson. She was a friend of Bjornstrom's. He was aware of her smile in the dawn light.
"It was not so difficult. Gunnar thought at first you had been drowned at the Fjallagfoss. He was very sad. But later one of the Fokker coast-guard planes reported a man sleeping between rocks on the banks of the Jokulsa a Fjollum, and he guessed that it could be you."
Bolan shook his head in bewilderment. He must have been beat, all right he hadn't even heard the plane.
"After that," Erika continued, "well, he said he knew you must come to town. He knew you would probably make it at night. This is the only road you could come by."
"Yeah, but he didn't know he couldn't have known what time I'd arrive. I didn't know myself."
"That was not so much a problem. All I had to do was wait. I have been here since midnight," the woman said simply.
"You waited for me all night?" Bolan was astonished. "Well, I am grateful. But I don't get it. What's your angle? For that matter, what's his?"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean... well, why are you doing this?"
"I told you. I am his friend."
"Okay. But people don't hang in around deserted gas stations all night toting this kind of thing." He hefted the assault rifle in both hands. "I mean, you have to agree it's a little... unusual."
"Gunner is an unusual man."
"Yeah, I found that out. Luckily for me, too. He says he's mad at the Russians for screwing around in his country and he wants to find out why. But that can't be the whole story. What is he really? Some kind of cop?"
"You will have to ask Gunnar," Erika said.
Bolan grinned. "I already did. I didn't get very far. But I'll keep at it. I don't give up that easy."
"Gunner, also. He is a very determined man. But sometimes even for such men it is necessary to trust people, trust them without knowing everything."
"Sure it is," Bolan said. "I think your friend Gunnar and me proved that. Still, even with someone you trust, there are times when it would help to know just who you are trusting!" But he could pry nothing more from the woman about herself, about Bjornstrom or about the special, secret interest he showed in the Russian intrigue.
Bolan sighed. As soon as he located one piece of the puzzle and locked it into place, another sector blanked out on him.
"Gunner asked that you should wear these," Erika said. She ducked back into the shadows and produced baggy sailcloth pants, a fisherman's sweater and a battered watch cap with a shiny peak. "He will meet you at the lakehead at midday. You will find him by the small jetty, in a rubber dinghy with the motor outside, you know?"
"Whatever you say." Bolan drew the clothes on over his black-quit. He was past asking questions. He had told himself he would play the cards the way they were dealt. So okay, here was a fresh hand, straight out of the shoe. "What do I do between now and midday?"
"There is a place near the lake. Sometimes tourists can be there, foreigners who fish or men interested in the... in the rocks, yes?"
"Geologists?"
"Yes. Geologists. You can look at the rocks, too. Or walk by the water. At this season, nobody will ask questions. But first you can come into the town and drink coffee for the lake you must go to the intersection on the far side of Grimsstadir and then turn left for the main road to the bridge. It is perhaps three miles in all."
Bolan had finished dressing. The sky was lightening. It would soon be full daylight.
"We go now," the girl said. "I will show you the coffee place, then I must leave you." Suddenly she reached up and touched his face. "You are a strong man," she said. "Like Gunnar. I like a man that he should be strong and brave." Seeing Bolan's expression, she gave a little laugh. "You are not shocked? In my country we have a tradition a girl is not afraid to say if she likes a man."
"In your country?" The phrase had slipped out, Bolan thought, as though she, too, was a foreigner in Iceland.
"Don't you come from this part of the world then?" Erika evaded a direct answer. "It was a manner of speaking," she said.
"Come. We must be quick now."
She began walking toward the center of town.
Bolan was intrigued nevertheless.
"What about Gunnar?" he queried, hurrying to keep up with her. "Doesn't he mind when you... say that you like another man?"
"Why should he? Gunnar is a friend. We work together sometimes. Sometimes we may play."
Yeah, Bolan thought. But what's the name of the game? What business are these characters in?
Clearly there was nothing more to be gained from the blonde. He glanced at her face as they approached a small square where shopkeepers were already setting out sidewalk stalls of fruit and vegetables. Small nose, wide mouth, square, determined chin. Eyes that were very blue beneath the pale, cropped cap of hair. The kind of girl who knew exactly what she wanted. And would make damned sure that she got it.
He watched her walking away along a narrow street after she had pointed out a cafe where workingmen cradled cups of steaming coffee behind the misted windows. Seeing the rounded swell of breasts beneath the tight sweater, the supple curves of hip and thigh as she moved, he experienced a sudden pang of desire, a fleeting wish that he really was still on vacation, free to use his leisure time any way he wanted. He looked at the woman's retreating figure again. Later, there might be time... For him, romance would have to wait until he found some answers to the present mystery.
Every fiber of his being was dedicated to that end.
Bolan strode out beyond the town with the caseless assault rifle concealed in his plastic carryall.
After the intersection, the road arrowed across a stony stretch of moorland to the bridge at the lakehead.
Here, for the first time since he left Egilsstadir, Bolan saw automobiles and trucks. There were not many; most of the cars were old, local three-cylinder Saabs, battered Volvos dating back to the 1950's, Volkswagen Beetles. The trucks were mainly small, loaded down with crates of produce, and he remembered that, despite the near-polar latitude, long daylight hours permitted the cultivation of tomatoes, peaches and sometimes even bananas grown in greenhouses.
He noticed the Renault panel truck not because it lacked lettering along its sides, not even because it was new and carried Reykjavik license plates, but because of a slight hesitation in its approach, a momentary pause in the even note of the engine as it drew abreast. As if the driver was satisfying himself that he had arrived in the right street, at the correct address.
Or that the person he was passing was the one he sought.
Bolan had the impression of heavyset men he couldn't tell their numbers crowded into the truck. Men dressed in anonymous gray. Then it accelerated, sped up a slight rise and vanished into the dip beyond.
The Executioner continued his unhurried pace. But the zipper of the plastic holdall was open now and his right hand was already inside, wrapped around the pistol grip of the G-11.
He saw the panel truck stewed across the road at the bottom of the depression as he breasted the rise.
There was no other traffic in sight.
Two men were crouched behind the hood.
Two more were running for clumps of stone at each side of the road. A fifth appeared between the open rear doors of the truck. All of them were armed with submachine guns.