Bolan had made perhaps 120 feet when the ice walls slanted away into the darkness on all sides and he was left dangling in space, suspended above a giant cavern beneath the glacier.
Now the roar of underground waters was loud in his ears. Cautiously, hand over hand, he lowered himself to the last knotted length of rope until his feet submerged and then grounded on solid rock.
Warm water gushed around his knees.
A strong current knocked pebbles against his ankles.
Bolan waded across to a shelf, where the hollowed ice wall rested on glistening bedrock. He unbolted the shackles and released the kayak from its rope, stowing the craft safely on the ledge out of reach of the frothing torrent.
Unpacking a powerful flashlight, he flicked it on, then swung right and left to examine the base from which his perilous journey would start.
The cavern was huge. The beam was not strong enough to illuminate its inner recesses. Channeled between smooth islands of rock, the underground river ran fast and deep toward the mouth of a tunnel. At the far end it would, Bolan knew, burst through the Vatnajokull's terminal moraine and emerge into the open air.
He intended to be with it.
Playing the beam from water to rock to ice, he marveled at the paradox of nature that permitted this age-old frozen massif to remain unmelted above active subterranean volcanoes spewing out molten lava and creating enough hot springs to provide half the country with domestic warmth.
Too bad the humans up top whose convictions ran to equally opposite extremes had not yet learned to compromise in the same way and exist together in peace.
Yeah, there was a lesson to be learned here if only animal man would check his downward rush long enough to pause and think.
Mack Bolan laid out the ground pad and sleeping bag on the driest part of the shelf he could find, ate a portion of his iron rations and turned in for the night. The pale disk of sky overhead had already darkened to what passed for night in this sub-Arctic summer, and he had to rely on an early start if he was to cross the underground section of his route and make good time through the headwaters of the Jokulsa a Fjollum tomorrow.
Four hours later he was lowering the kayak into the stream. Settled in the cockpit, he adjusted the black neoprene spray skirt around his waist and tightened the elastic draw-cord that fixed it in a watertight seal around the cockpit coaming.
The light filtering down from the sinkhole that was now his sole link with the outside world had already brightened. Bolan clipped the flashlight into its special harness, switched on, fisted his two-blade laminated hardwood paddle and headed with swift, precise strokes for the tunnel mouth.
The first ten minutes of the journey, before he had become accustomed to the speed of the river and the darkness outside of the flashlight beam, were hair-raising.
At first the channel remained smooth and deep, the water speeding almost soundlessly, the boater required only to dip an occasional blade in a brace that would push the kayak away from either of the rock walls rushing past.
Then the stream divided around a massive rock, divided again, and there was white water on every side.
The flashlight beam careened wildly out of line as the lightweight craft scythed through tows of two-foot high waves. Water washed over the deck and pummeled the spray skirt. Black fingers of rock reached threateningly through the foaming tide.
Bolan leaned expertly into the swirls of current, his paddle flashing left and right, forcing the kayak into the main channel that had been gouged by the racing river.
Beyond the rapid, the stream was wider and shallower. And now the spray-loaded darkness was loud once more with the sound of rushing water.
The vessel swept around a wide curve in the subterranean torrent, and Bolan was drenched in an icy cascade when the kayak shot through a shaft of freezing water thundering down from an opening in the glacier overhead.
Here near the river's source, the boiling flow from geothermal springs mixed with such icy spills to produce an average temperature of ninety-five degrees a little below blood heat. The layer of moisture inside Bolan's wet suit, acting as an insulator against eventual cold, had been raised the few degrees necessary to make up the difference. But the unexpected freezing spray penetrating the neoprene seals of the suit made the warrior temporarily catch his breath.
It was the subsequent warm flow of blood on supercooled skin plus a stinging sensation in the lobe of his left ear and the realization that the chin strap of his helmet had snapped that alerted him to the danger even before the sound of the shot echoed thunderously around the ice cavern.
5
Bolan's reactions were precise and immediate. He killed the light and stowed the paddle. Then he leaned inward, letting the kayak drift with the swift current, coaxing it toward a rock overhang bordering the outer margin of the river bend.
He felt the lightweight hull nudge the rock. The stern swung around, leaving the bow facing upstream in the dark.
Bolan reached above his head, feeling for a projection that might break the smooth curve of rock. The kayak's gunwale was scraping the water-sculptured rock surface. It could be heard over the ripple and bubble of the stream.
His fingers lodged in a crevice, held on, steadying the craft against the pull of the current.
There had been no second shot. No muzzle-flash had showed against the myriad reflections glinting from wet rock and water and the ice roofing the cavern. But Bolan figured the sniper must be on the far side of the bend in the river since that position would give a marksman the best view and the longest time to take aim at a target being swept downstream. Now he would be holding his fire, awaiting some give-away move on the part of the target.
In total darkness the Executioner held his breath, straining every sense to locate the invisible killer's fire point. With his free hand, Bolan released one side of the spray skirt from the coaming and groped stealthily inside for the waterproof satchel holding his two guns.
Right now the number-one priority was survival.
The AutoMag possessed greater stopping power, but in these conditions, with distances and deflections as yet unknown, the Beretta's longer range and marginally greater accuracy outweighed Big Thunder's skull-busting impact.
Thumbing open the clasps of the satchel, Bolan withdrew the Italian death bringer and eased off the safety.
He couldn't believe that the tiny click was audible over the roaring rush of water, but a blinding light blazed instantly to life, swung across the turbulent current and homed in on the kayak. The beam, more powerful than his own, had lanced out as he had guessed from the far side of the bend, exposing him against the rock in the light's pitiless glare.
The warrior could deal with one or more snipers, but not spotlit as vulnerably as an insect pinned to a board. He triggered off a 3-shot burst that smashed the light. At the same time he relaxed his grip on the rock and shoved the kayak violently out into midstream.
The assassin fired again, a hail of lead that chiseled splinters from the rock and stung Bolan's face as the craft spun once, twice, and then whirled away into the blackness.
Bolan knew now he was facing an assault rifle, fashioned for single shot or full-auto use.
He allowed the kayak to ground on the inside of the bend, downstream from the gunner now but still on the opposite bank. Snapping off the spray skirt, he wedged the boat between two boulders and heaved himself out of the cockpit.
He was waist deep in warm water, the 93-R held high.
His most vital objective was to keep the kayak and his own lamp undamaged.
Entombed beneath three thousand feet of solid ice, with God knew how many divergent channels and cataracts in the darkness ahead and no hope of finding the sinkhole and climbing out, he would be lost if the boat was punctured or there was no light to guide him.