The bomber collapsed into a huddle of blood-stained rags. The grenade flew from his hand and exploded harmlessly on the upland turf near the truck.
Shattered glass tinkled to the roadway.
Bolan rose to his feet, replaced the assault rifle in the damaged plastic holdall and walked to the truck. The engine refused to start carburetor, feed pipes and inlet manifold had been mangled by the G-11's first murderous eruption. He pushed it into the ditch, hauled the bodies into the rear section, closed the doors and continued on his way. He was in sight of the lake before the next vehicle passed him on the way to Grimsstadir.
12
Bjornstrom arrived punctually at midday at the tiller of a Hypalon raft exactly like the one he had lost at the Fjallagfoss.
But this one carried large white numerals painted on the inflated gunwales.
It was clearly some kind of official craft.
Another section of the puzzle clicked into place.
"I get it," Bolan said.
"This guy from the Icelandic Water Board, the inspector you say checks out the pump houses and the pipelines 'once in a while,' that's you, am I right?" Bjornstrom nodded.
"And you found out that the Russians were tapping your supply and decided to carry out a more detailed inspection... on your own?"
"That is correct."
"But why? Why not just tip off your bosses? Why not call in the army or the police or whatever? Tell these bastards where they get off."
"There is no army," Bjornstrom said. "As for the police, it would require action at diplomatic level. The real reasons could be buried or the plot abandoned and restarted a different way. I prefer first to find out the truth. Then, maybe, when we know what the project is, it can be stopped."
"Okay," Bolan said, "I understand that. But... are Ingrams and G-11's part of your normal inspector's kit?"
"Absolutely," the Icelander joked. "I got dozens of them. I give them to my friends at Christmas!"
"And the girl? Erika?"
"She is a friend."
And the Executioner had to be content with that unsatisfactory answer once more.
Bjornstrom started the outboard, and they nosed out into the lake. It was in fact no more than a sinuous drowned valley gashing the bare landscape, dammed at the far end by a shelf of harder rock. Its narrow, fifteen-mile length was dotted with small islands, but they saw very few boats, most of them were solitary fishermen and nobody fired on them from above the walls of the canyon. Beyond the natural dam, the Jokulsa a Fjollum thundered down beneath a dense cloud of spume into Iceland's largest, deepest, widest cataract, the Dettifoss. Three miles farther on the two men were faced with a shorter but no less arduous portage on account of a smaller waterfall called the Rettarfoss.
After that, the stream wider and slower now, there were bleak lowlands to cross, high ground to the east with the fifteen-hundred-foot smoking cone of Pristikluvatn, one of the island's many active volcanoes, and at last the division of the river into several branches that ran out into the great northern bay named the Axarfjordur.
The trip took them two days.
They passed beneath the bridge near the Russian concession exactly one week after Bolan had driven over it on his way from Akureyri to Egilsstadir.
He looked at the surface workings a lot more closely this time.
They crested a ridge that separated the steep-sided fjord from a smaller arm of the sea that pierced the indented coastline to the west. The narrow neck of land between these two inlets was blanked off by a ten-foot wall approached by a winding mountain track.
"The gates are guarded by men with shotguns," Bjornstrom said, "and there are dog handlers with Doberman pinschers patrolling the perimeter."
The ridge, isolated in this way as much as an island, was leased in its entirety to the Russians, he told the Executioner. The tin roofs of pithead buildings were half hidden by a swell of moorland, but the twin wheels of the colliery-style hoist on their iron pylons were clearly visible against the gray sky.
"What exactly are they supposed to be mining?" Bolan asked.
Bjornstrom shrugged. "Prospecting actually. Tin lodes, veins rich in other minerals, certain ores among the granites and quartzites that form the promontory. Uranium, for all I know. Enough, anyway, to make a believable reason for having surface plant, bore-sinking equipment, the pithead gear that you can see and a shaft with a cage."
"And at the foot of the shaft?"
"That is what we have to find out."
"Any chance of scaling that cliff?" Bolan jerked his head toward the seamed rock face that lay between the coarse grass on top of the ridge and the deep water of the fjord.
"It is possible, but guards patrol all the time. We better can make some entry through the caves."
"Caves?"
Bjornstrom cut the engine and allowed the raft to drift. "If I go farther, they may suspect. We inspect as far as the bridge, where the river becomes tidal."
"You mentioned caves?"
"Yes. This site is well chosen. By road, the nearest village is seven miles away. In a direct line, the nearest is Pvera, on the other side of the fjord." He pointed at the opposite cliff. Some way farther north, slate roofs and chimneys could be seen on the skyline. "But to get there by road is twice as far."
"The caves!" Bolan insisted.
The Icelander pointed seaward once more, this time below the ridge on which the concession was located. A grass-topped spur jutted out from the cliff and curled around toward them.
"The spur is granite," he said. "It is weathered in blocks and cubes, which makes climbing easier. But there is also a basalt dike by the fault that separates the spur from the ridge, and that runs out underwater like a jetty."
Bolan waited patiently.
"Between these two," Bjornstrom said, "there are three caves. The openings above the surface are high enough to allow a rowing boat to enter at high water, a larger craft when the tide is low."
"And you figure there may be a connection between these caves and the mine shaft?" At last Bolan permitted himself to show eagerness at the thought of something positive.
"It is possible," Bjornstrom said "Dressed this way, we are believable as Water Board officials as far as the bridge. To go farther, unless we are fishing or in a coastguard cutter, could alert the guards above."
"So we wait until dark?"
"I think so. As you see, curving this way, that bluff cuts off the view of the caves from anyone across the fjord in Pvera. That could work for us, too. So I say we forget about being Water Board inspectors and go tonight, as ourselves, swimming, to see about those caves. Okay?"
"You got it," Bolan said.
The water was cold as sin, black as a starless night in the south. It wrapped icy fingers around heart and lungs as if it would squeeze every vestige of life away, plastering the wet suits to their bodies so close that the insulating film of moisture was almost neutralized.
Bolan led the way, swimming strongly in a modified Australian crawl that left scarcely a ripple on the dark surface of the fjord. They had paddled the raft silently to a diminutive creek two hundred yards upstream and left it behind a granite outcrop that rose from the water. On this initial recon they were equipped with flippers, face masks, snorkel tubes and electric lamps brow-strapped above the masks. A commando knife was the only weapon each man carried.