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."
The gully was slippery as well as steep; it would have been impossible to go slowly even if they wanted to.
They tumbled, slid and skated down the moss-covered rock bed of the rivulet that ran between its banks until they could see the sunlit waters of the fjord through the thorny branches below them.
It was then that they heard the assault-rifle fire for the second time one very long burst and then, immediate afterward, a much shorter one. This was followed by an irregular series of lighter shots punctuating the distant reports of the Russian guns.
"Used up all the rounds in the G-11," Bolan muttered. They counted the automatic-pistol shots. Four bursts of three, five single shots, a final triple blast.
And then, shocking in its impact, a savage, cracking detonation that sent echoes clattering from side to side of the ravine and startled flocks of seabirds squawking from the rocks above.
Gunnar Bjornstrom had bowed out the way he wanted it.
The Executioner put an arm around the sobbing woman's shoulders. "Keep going," he said. "He trusted us to take advantage of his courage. If we don't get the hell out of here and carry on the fight — we're letting him down."
The raft was in the middle of a fleet of blue-and-white fishing boats, the bus was on its way back to the bridge at the head of the fjord and the helicopter after a couple of impotent passes over the ravine had flown back toward the pithead when the first spasm shivered the calm surface of the water.
A mushroom of smoke and dust bellied out from the cliff above the cave mouths, and a huge explosion rolled across the fjord. Before the reverberations of the blast had died away, it was followed by the rumbling roar of thousands of tons of rock collapsing into the water.
The boats rocked crazily as shock waves raced across the surface. One after the other, Bolan sensed rather than heard the muffled minor blasts that would wreck the installations of the secret base now sealed off forever behind the rockfall barring the entrance.
And then, silhouetted against the clear northern sky, the gantry carrying the pithead wheel folded inward and collapsed as a gigantic tongue of flame smashed through the elevator and the shaft erupted in thunderous fury.
When the last rumble had died away and the fishing boats had scattered to take a closer look at the landslide that had tumbled into their fjord, Bolan smiled wearily.
"At least they'll be safe for quite some time from Soviet submarines," he said.
Erika smiled at him, the wide mouth tempting. "And now?" she inquired. "I think you said you were on vacation? I'd be happy, very happy to act as your guide and point out some of the more... positive... pleasures of this country."
Regretfully, he shook his head. The past few days had made the point vacations were not for him. Not yet. Not while animal man ran wild.
"There will be other bases," he said. "Other submarines. Other fishermen who have the right to live their lives free of fear."
She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. Then she said, "Another time... maybe?"
"Maybe," the Executioner said.