"Gunner and I are not lovers," Erika said. "He has a wife and child in Eskifjordur, on the east coast."
Bjornstrom nodded and grinned. "We are just good friends," he agreed. "We work together."
Slightly unnerved by this Nordic frankness, Bolan sought refuge in another cliche, a military one this time, just to play safe. "I think it's time we synchronized our watches," he said gruffly.
They made the caves without incident, and Erika dived beneath the surface to swim in via the smallest opening. It was a cold morning, with mist still blanketing the cliff tops, but a bright halo glaring through the dun overcast suggested that the sun might break through later.
Bolan and the Icelander were obliged to keep a very low profile approaching the main cavern, because there were now four hitmen posted on the spur, two of them continually scanning the openings and the cliff face above. Finally, taking advantage of the fact that the mist lay thickest on the surface of the fjord, they floated facedown and allowed themselves to be carried through by the incoming tide.
After that it was a matter of waiting, half submerged, under the arch until the first whistle blew.
Once the work force had disappeared, they hauled themselves up onto the dock and made for the spiral stairway that led to the gallery and control room.
From the top of the stairs, Bolan looked through to the smaller chamber and saw Erika, shining in her black frogman gear, emerge from the water by the rowboat and hurry up the slipway.
She turned, saw him and gave a quick thumbs-up before vanishing through the opening that gave onto the powerhouse cave and the generators.
Bolan and his companion checked out the routes they would have to take to their separate targets and then returned to the empty control room.
Soon after the workers returned to the chamber, whistles blew again in the cavern outside.
Hastily they shamed themselves out of sight beneath the UHF radio bench.
"Straight down to the end of the gallery and up onto your rock site once they make the shelter," Bolan whispered.
They heard voices and the clang of feet on the iron stairs. A silence.
Then, over the loudspeakers in Russian, came, "What the hell have you been doing? Hurry, you fool! No, it's too late to forget the shelter you'll have to take cover in the control room."
Bolan and Bjornstrom froze. They wouldn't be able to place any charges during this stoppage! Heavy footsteps thumped along the gallery. A man hurried into the control room, panting. It was the guard who had been on the far side of the cavern. His boots gleamed six inches from Bolan's head.
Two muffed explosions heavier than any they had heard before shook the floor and rocked the bench above them.
Somewhere above the transmitter chassis, glass chattered momentarily.
They held their breath. A third report, and then the whistles again.
A cigarette butt dropped to the floor beside the bench and a heel swiveled to grind it out. The acrid odor of cheap tobacco and wet ash blew in under the bench.
Bjornstrom sneezed.
There was a startled exclamation as the guard bent down. Gray eyes stared unbelievingly at the two saboteurs.
Hands scrabbled for the pistol grip of the Skorpion.
Bolan reached out and grabbed the guard's ears, savagely jerking the man's head forward. At the same time Bjornstrom rolled out from beneath the bench, seized the boots and swept the Russian's feet from under him. The guard crashed facedown to the floor.
The noise was lost in the sounds of workers returning to the work project.
Bolan and the Icelander were on top of the guy before he could even cry out.
Bjornstrom pulled off his helmet and jammed it back to front over the man's head, masking his face. At the same time Bolan's hand clamped over his mouth and jaw. Desperately trying to drag in air, the guard succeeded only in plastering the suffocating rubber device more firmly against his nostrils.
He was a strong man, threshing wildly from side to side on the concrete, but now Bjornstrom was kneeling on his biceps, pinning both arms, and the Executioner had thrown the whole weight of his body across the legs, heaving up and down as the knees jerked spasmodically.
Bjornstrom's hands went around the guard's throat and squeezed. The muffed cries behind the neoprene mask lapsed into a gurgle that rapidly diminished.
It took less than a minute for oxygen deprivation to sap the energy from the strangled man's fluttering muscles, another fifty-five seconds before the frantic thumping of the heart was stilled.
They rolled the body under the bench.
Bolan rubbed a forearm across his brow.
He was sweating. "I hated to do that," he whispered, "but sometimes there's no other way."
It was almost an hour before the whistles sounded again.
Bolan in the meantime had stripped jackboots, combat fatigues and miner's helmet from the dead man, and pulled them on over his wet suit. Fortunately the guard had been as tall as the Executioner and much wider.
For those fifty-plus dry-throated and agonizing minutes, Bolan patrolled the gallery. As much of the time as he believably could, he spent near the control room, out of sight of the two overseers in their steel-shuttered cubbyhole.
When he did circle over the lock gates and make the far side, he kept his head turned away and down as if he was paying particular attention to the quays below. But his hands were clammy around the butt and barrel of the Skorpion machine pistol, the hairs pricked on the nape of his neck each time he passed near the shutters, and it was with a vast sigh of relief that he finally heard the signal to take shelter.
Heading for the entrance before the others came up the stairway, he ducked behind the stack of oil drums at the last minute and allowed them all to pass.
As soon as the dock was deserted, Bjornstrom was out of the control room and speeding along the gallery. He had vaulted the rail and clambered up along the weathered outcrops that were tiered above the opening to the cave before the first detonation.
Bolan was back in the control room, taping primed sticks of plastic among the operating levers, beneath the bench, in back of the computer console.
Screwing an inspection cover back in place, he saw through a window that Bjornstrom was spread-eagled over a slab of granite immediately above the channel leading in from the fjord. It was late morning now, and the sun must have dissipated the mist, because there was a bright glare on the water that reflected chevrons and crescents of light across the vaulted roof of the cavern.
From where he was, Bolan was unable to see clearly just what the Icelander was doing. He could not distinguish the slab of granite that had jammed across a gap and prevented the cliff from tumbling into the fjord the quartzite, shining with damp and alive with reflections, looked as solid as any mountain he had seen. Perhaps the fractures were more easily identifiable from outside.
Cautiously he emerged from the control room now the final charge for the dock gates.
Blast assaulted his eardrums. A puff of warm air followed the explosion, the loudest yet, and a shower of rock fragments clattered among the ironwork of the scaffolding. Splashes pitted the surface of the water below.
Several jagged pieces of quartzite whistled past the Executioner like tilde shrapnel.
He dodged momentarily behind the oil drums.
Bjornstrom appeared to be hard at work still. His left arm vanished into a crevice.
There was another, small explosion... and, almost at once, the whistles blew.
Bolan swore beneath his breath. The all-clear had taken him completely by surprise there had been far less time lag than usual. His fellow saboteur was crucified on the rock face. He couldn't possibly climb down and make the shelter of the drums before the Russians emerged from their refuge; not could it be safe to retreat the way they had come in the first time there were guards on the spur, and in any case he would be spotted from inside before he could edge out of sight around the corner of the arch.