The engine turned, almost caught, coughed... and died.
He tried again; once more the engine spun without firing.
"Push!" he yelled to the girl. "But let 'em have it first."
They were protected by the bank, but the Russians had come out into the open and were spreading out to enfilade them. She sprayed them with a blast from the Kalashnikov and they scattered.
Bolan was still leaning vainly on the starter button, but the cold engine obstinately refused to fire. As Erika leaned her shoulder against the Pobeda and rolled it into motion, he slammed it into gear. In a few yards the utility reached a Blood Heatandro 179 slope leading to the dirt road and began to gather speed under its own weight. Bolan flicked the lever into neutral and coasted.
Erika scrambled aboard and fired another burst.
Behind them now there was shooting no indiscriminate volleys but single, considered shots. A slug spanged off the Pobeda's body and screeched skyward. The windshield splintered and starred. One of the rear wheels began to thump jarringly as the tire deflated and ran off the rim. They could hear orders through the bullhorn. A truck roared to life.
Bolan clung grimly to the wheel, taking advantage of every irregularity in the track surface to increase their speed. It sounded as if whoever had taken over from Antonin had ordered his men to disable the utility rather than annihilate its occupants.
The final scenario would nevertheless work out as seek-and-destroy. Clearly they could not afford to have anyone at large who had heard the incriminating briefing broadcast by the KGB security chief.
The route, dipping sharply at first, flattened out and then rose to a small crest before it slanted eventually down to the gates. When they were on the steepest part, Bolan wrenched the stick into third gear with the clutch held out, then took his foot off the pedal with a jerk, hoping the engine might catch. There was a whine of gears as the momentum of the car battled against the engine compression... but still no cylinder fired.
The Executioner swore and thrust the lever back into neutral. The utility, which had slowed appreciably, began gathering speed once more. They were out of immediate range now, but there was a truck rocketing after them in a cloud of dust and long lines of men fanning out across the moorland on either side of the trail.
Bolan looked over his shoulder. The Icelander was slumped in a corner, vomiting blood. Erika's face was stricken. In answer to the Executioner's raised brows she shook her head.
Bolan bit his lip. The Pobeda leveled out, sped along the flat stretch and then gradually lost speed as it began the climb toward the crest. When they were still one hundred yards away, it became clear that they were not going to make it.
Cursing again, the warrior bounced in his seat, turning the wheel this way and that, trying to coax the machine further. Erika jumped out and heaved... but the car slowed inexorably, drew to a halt and then started to roll down the hill.
Bolan yanked up on the hand brake and jumped from the car himself.
Pausing with his hand on the top rail of the shattered windshield, he saw over the crest the final stretch of track with the closed gates shutting off the outside world... and mile beyond, far away down the loops of road leading to the highway, the helicopter grounded in front of an elderly bus. Antlike figures milled between the two transports, ancient and modern. And behind, among the huts on the headland, a column of black smoke still stood against the northern sky.
Antonin's emissaries were doing their thing warning off the kids and their mentor because of a regrettable accident at the mine!
Bolan breathed a sigh of relief. His most pressing problem was solved the innocent would be out of danger when the charges went off.
The two that remained were serious enough.
Like what was he going to do with Gunnar Bjornstrom? And how was he going to save the woman before the chopper returned to hose death on them from above?
As if he had read the Executioner's thoughts, Bjornstrom himself solved both of them.
Squelching sickeningly in his blood-filled rubber suit, the wounded man dragged himself upright on the seat. His eyes were bright with pain but his voice was firm. "Bolan," he said thickly. "No use. I'm finished and we all know it. Leave me here and I'll hold them off until..."
"No way," Bolan began. "We can't..."
"Please. You must. For Erika." The voice faded and then strengthened again. "Over the crest, there's... gully... a shallow ravine leads down to the valley... where the creek... our boat..." He stopped speaking, panting for breath.
"Even if we did leave you," Bolan said gently, "they'd get you. You know that. And they mustn't get any of us, dead or alive, because if they could tie in your country, or mine, with this..."
"That's why you must go, both of you," Bjornstrom croaked. "Need you to... carry on fight." He coughed blood. "Anyway I thought of that. They won't get me... to... identify." He stretched out his unwounded arm and unclenched the fingers of his hand.
Lying on his palm was the remaining plastic grenade.
Bolan hesitated. Militarily, it made sense. The truck had screeched to a halt at the foot of the hill, and armed men were running for the cover of boulders strewing the slope of moorland.
"Go," Bjornstrom urged. "Your only chance. You'd never make it... with me. And what's the use? I'm through."
Erika was crying.
"You can put... Ingram across the back of the seat," Bjornstrom said. His voice was weakening now. "Fire one-handed. Leave me one of the pistols. Keep them off for hours... might take a few with me, too." A ghastly smile cracked open his livid features. "Bit of luck for you two, maybe... mine ran out."
Bolan made up his mind. War called for tough decisions. But the mission was more important than individual members of the team, right? And the missions to come.
Besides the guy was right. He was on the way out. It was useless to sacrifice two others for no valid reason.
"Okay," he said crisply, "we'll do that. But take this instead of the Ingram there should be around fifty rounds left and your own magazine's almost exhausted." He laid the Heckler and Koch assault rifle across the back of the seat and picked up the MAC-11.
Erika slammed a fresh clip into the Beretta and laid it beside the bigger gun. She leaned down to brush her lips against Bjornstrom's forehead and turned away. Her shoulders were shaking.
Bolan held out his hand. "It was a good fight, soldier," he said huskily. "You will be remembered."
The last they saw of the Icelander, before they scrambled up a shallow bank bordering the trail and dropped down on the far side of the crest, he was propped up in the corner of the seat in the sunshine, staring down the dusty road toward the puffs of smoke blossoming from behind the boulders at the foot of the hill. His good hand was curled around the pistol grip of the assault rifle. Erika swore later that he was smiling.
The Russians opened fire on the fugitives as they wormed their way toward Bjornstrom's gully. But there were slabs of granite among the tussocks of coarse grass along the ridge to give them cover.
The Executioner loosed off short bursts from between the rocks until the Ingram's magazine was exhausted. But after that the gunfire from below became sporadic, and only an occasional bullet ricocheted from the outcrops above their heads. Bolan guessed that the KGB killers were advancing up the hill toward the stalled utility.
The warrior and the woman had made the steep, scrubcovered gulch before they heard the first rasp of the Heckler and Koch G-11.
As Bjornstrom had said, the gulch fed into the ravine above the creek, bypassing the edge of the concession.
"We have to make that raft pretty damn quick and get it out in the open, in the middle of the fjord," Bolan told her. "They won't dare attack us outside the concession, not even with the chopper, if the boat can be seen from Pvera."