Desperately Bolan glanced over his shoulder. He heard the sound of footsteps and voices coming from outside the doorway leading to the shelter. In a moment the workers would be flooding out and onto the stairway.
In the few seconds that remained there was only one thing for the Icelander to do and Bolan dared not raise his voice to suggest it.
But Bjornstrom realized the plight he was in. With a quick turn of the head to check that Bolan was still watching, he raised a hand in salute, let go his hold on the rock and dropped twenty feet into the water.
There was enough height to allow him to jackknife before he went in. His outstretched fingertips arrowed through the surface, and he disappeared with scarcely a splash to mark his passage.
By the time the Russians reached the gallery, his dark shape was lost among fronds of seaweed in the shadowy depths of the entrance, and the few ripples he had made on his way out were swallowed up in the interplay of light below the arch as the tide sucked and lapped its way into the basin.
For the second time Bolan sighed with relief. He lowered his head and shoulders behind the drums, waiting for work to resume before he continued his perilous impersonation.
Had Bjornstrom succeeded in placing his charge? Was the plastic in the best position for toppling the granite? There was no way he could tell. Bjornstrom would either have to swim back to the rocks where the raft was hidden or attempt to join Erika in the smaller cavern.
One thing was certain — the man who worked for the Norwegian secret service would not be able to sabotage the mine shaft and the elevator now.
So how best to use his own remaining charge? Bolan weighed the pros and cons. The lock gates or the elevator shaft?
He decided on the shaft. The odds against a successful attack on the gates increased with every second the dead guard could be missed at any time and that would put the entire place on general alert; to cripple the gates, it would be necessary to lodge the plastic explosive among the hinge mechanism or actually between them, and in either case that involved an underwater operation; if he was to dive, Bolan must discard the guard's uniform and that would hasten the chances of discovery; finally it was possible that the work force might break for lunch soon, and that meant no more whistle-stops.
This time he did not have to wait so long.
Checking that the two overseers in the hutch were still facing the dry-dock, he followed the last of the Russians through the doorway... instead of heading for the shelter, he dropped to his hands and knees, crawled past the steel shutters below window level and then ran for the warren of passageways beyond.
He chose the one leading directly away from the basin. It rose steeply upward and ended in a circular chamber from which several tunnels led off.
The highest and widest which had evidently been used for the transportation of plant from the elevator to the submarine pens was roughly hewed from the rock, supported every few yards by pit props and cross beams and dimly lit by low-power electric lamps. A current of cool air blew along it, which the warrior guessed must originate at the foot of the shaft.
He hurried along the tunnel, turned a corner and was faced with a T-junction.
Licking one finger and holding it up, he found that the draft came from the left. As he set off in that direction there was a dull concussion somewhere behind him, and his ears cracked momentarily as the pressure in the passageway altered.
A few yards farther on a second blast, a series of small detonations dimmed the lights.
Bolan figured he must still be almost two hundred yards from the mine shaft.
Before he was halfway there, he heard the faint shrilling of whistles. He would have to pull out all the stops if he was to plant his explosive before the risk of encountering one of the guards became unacceptable.
The elevator cage was at the pithead a diminutive plug blocking the light at the top of a vertical shaft stretching far up into the dark. The winching equipment, the huge counterweight and the arrangement of wire hawsers in the circular rock well at the bottom of the shaft could have been designed to operate a passenger elevator in some prehistoric subway station, Bolan thought with a smile.
But there was nothing prehistoric about the footsteps he could hear advancing far away in the maze of passageways near the dock basin.
Reaching into the neoprene pouch, he drew out the remaining two-stick delayed-action charge, checked that the watch was ticking and correctly set, and jumped lightly down into the elevator well.
Ten seconds later, he pulled his hand back from the underside of an inspection hatch with an exclamation of astonishment.
There was already a charge in place there time-fused, neatly bundled and taped securely in place.
Before he had time to think, a voice said softly behind him, "There is a saying in your country, I believe, that great minds think alike. It is good to find that this is true!"
Bolan whirled. He was facing Bjornstrom, the wet suit still damply gleaming in the wan underground lighting. "How the hell did you get here?" Bolan demanded in a whisper.
"Swam around into the smallest cave and found a tunnel that led here directly. Very convenient and it does not seem to be patrolled."
"Great." Bolan glanced at the shaft. "Might as well leave my charge here, too. We won't have time to go back to the dock."
"There is a fissure that runs halfway around the shaft," the Icelander said. "If you push it in there, as well as destroying the mechanism we might also bring down some rock and wreck the shaft."
"Better still." Bolan was shoving the package as far into the crevice as it would go when they heard shouting in the distance followed by the insistent clamor of an alarm bell.
"I think they have found the dead guard," Bjornstrom said.
15
Shouted commands and the clump of booted feet drowned the sounds of the sea throughout the underground complex. The shrilling alarm bell punctuated orders rasping through speakers fixed to the rock walls at the corner of every passageway.
"We are lucky," Bolan panted, "that they didn't monitor the whole place with closed-circuit TV."
Bjornstrom had led him to an unlit opening on the far side of the elevator well, and they were hotfooting it back to the smallest cave.
"Whatever happens," Bolan insisted, "they mustn't know we penetrated as far as the mine shaft. They'll know we made the control room that's where they found the body. But I want them to think that was as far as we got; I want them to believe we only just made it to the cavern, that we were on our way in when the guy surprised us."
"How can we do that?" Bjornstrom demanded. The route was far shorter than the one Bolan had taken, and they were already approaching the cave.
Bolan stared across at the water swilling around the slipway. "We must get back to that stack of oil drums," he said, "and let them find us hiding there. Then we split. They have to think they surprised us at the start of a recon trip not the end of a sabotage mission. Otherwise they'll start poking around here and there to see where we went. And if they discover one of the charges..." He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.