Bolan maneuvered the utility down the grade, zigzagging the rock face, showering stones and loose stone chips into the void at each twist in the track. He wrenched the offroader between the boulders at the foot of the cliff and steered out across a plain floored with coarse upland grass.
Two hundred yards behind, the G-Wagen bumped out from the dark and ragged outcrops in pursuit. But the rough ground proved too much for the Audi.
With a lower ground clearance, the powerful sedan tore the casing from its rear differential on a rocky projection and ground to a halt with a scream of ruptured metal.
Bolan grinned.
There was no doubt now that the followers two stalled in the Audi and three in the Mere, as far as he could see were out to get him.
Three hundred yards out from the escarpment, granules of toughened glass stung the back of the Executioner's neck as the rear window of the Colt exploded inward. Someone in the Mercedes had opened fire with an SMG or a machine pistol. Heavy slugs ripped through the fiberglass top and punched holes in the steel bodywork of the vehicle.
But the range was too great for accurate shooting, and in any case the grass, smooth enough from a distance, was in fact so pitted with small hollows, so studded with hummocks that no marksman could hope to score from a bouncing utility traveling at more than forty mph.
Bolan gunned the 4x4. Some way beyond a slight swell in the treeless surface of the plain he had seen a slash of brighter, more vivid green coloring the dun landscape. His plan, a sudden decision, depended on his ability to dip out of sight of the Mercedes for an instant before he approached that stretch of green.
A prehistoric stone monument stood on the crest of the rise. Three vast rock columns, topped by two equally heavy horizontal slabs, hid the Colt momentarily from view as Bolan swerved sideways and threw out his luggage.
Then he was rocketing down the far slope toward that bright green space.
And briefly, but for long enough, the pursuers dropped out of sight on the far side of the low ridge.
Bolan braked fiercely, opened the driver's door and dived out of the decelerating Shogun. He hit the ground, shoulder-rolled and came up crouching, sprinting for the shelter of a solitary rock that pierced the grassy slope.
The off-roader, picking up speed again, plowed on with its engine bellowing. A twenty-pound stone, harvested by Bolan in case of emergencies during his fruitless attempt to make the Langjokull glacier, weighted its acceleration pedal flat to the floorboards.
As the G-Wagen appeared over the crest, Bolan's mount was hitting the half century. Swaying giddily from side to side, it made the foot of the slope, shot up a small ramp and took to the air for more than twenty feet before it hit the jade-green surface of the brighter area.
The Colt didn't bounce. The green surface erupted. The utility, obscured by a curtain of color, appeared to be half engulfed. Slowly it began sinking from sight.
The flat green swath was no grassy upland meadow but a treacherous quagmire, one of the deadly bogs for which the interior of Iceland was notorious.
The Mercedes squealed to a halt on the fringe of the morass. Three men, unaware of Bolan's escape, got out. A driver and two gunners, as he had surmised. He was ready behind the rocky outcrop with Big Thunder, the stainless steel .44 AutoMag in his right hand.
He felt no compunction. These guys or soldiers from the same outfit had three times tried to take him out.
The driver stayed by the door of the G-Wagen. The two hardmen armed, Bolan saw, with Uzi submachine guns walked warily to the shelving demarcation line between the grass and the moss-green slime of the swamp. With trigger fingers at the ready, they eyed the slowly submerging Colt, waiting for its occupant to make some desperate attempt to escape.
Nobody emerged. The abandoned utility was already more than halfway under. As they watched, the obscene mass flowed in through the open door and began to fill the cab.
"Over here!" Bolan called from his hiding place.
The killers whirled, flame blossoming from the stubby muzzles of their Uzis.
A hail of lead flailed against the rock, shrieking into the sky as the multiple detonations lost themselves in space.
Bolan had hurled himself sideways. He fired two-handed, stitching a classic left-right-left figure eight across the bodies of the two hoods.
One died on his feet, with white splinters of bone pricking through the crimson ruin of his chest. The other, caught in the left shoulder, spun away, hurled backward over the morass by the demon impact of a heavy Magnum flesh-shredder. He splashed into the wicked slime... and fatally, instead of lying flat or trying to roll himself to the side, he panicked and struck out, some crazed instinct prompting him to head away from the gunfire, toward the sinking Colt.
Bolan could do nothing but watch him die. But before that he had wasted the driver of the Mere with a 3-shot burst that shattered the near window and let daylight into the killer's skull before he could free his Police Special from its shoulder holster.
The wounded assassin was quickly sucked under. His screaming face gurgled beneath the heaving slime; the last corner of the Shogun's roof squelched out of sight.
Bolan stood and went to examine the bodies.
Zero.
Negative as the corpses in the hotel room in Reykjavik gray coveralls with no labels, no identifying marks; no papers, no documents, not even a wallet. The one undamaged face was neither Oriental, middle eastern nor Mediterranean in type. Like the others it could have come from any country in Northern Europe.
The Executioner sighed. He reloaded the AutoMag, climbed into the G-Wagen and fired the engine. He drove back toward the wrecked Audi, stopping on the way to recover his luggage from behind the stone monument. A hell of a way civilization had come since they were erected, he thought bitterly.
Bolan hoped the other stranded gunmen seeing the red utility return would assume their prey had been eliminated in the firelight and their comrades were on the way back to report success.
But it was too much to hope for.
Maybe they could see that there was only one rider instead of three; maybe there was some signal he should have given. In any event they opened fire while the G-Wagen was still more than one hundred yards away.
That was their first mistake.
The range, again, was too great for the handguns they were using. They must have concentrated all the heavier stuff they had on the spearhead detail in the Merc. That was the second.
Their third mistake, fatal in any warlike encounter, was to underestimate the strength and determination of their opponent.
Bolan made no attempt to slacken speed, take evasive action or duck out of the fight. He drove the heavy Mercedes utility straight at the sedan, keeping an iron grip on the bucking wheel with one hand, pumping lethal .44 boat tails from the AutoMag with the other hand.
The two-man crew from the Audi Quattro was out of the car and behind the hood before the Mercedes made half the distance, spitting death from revolvers he guessed to be Police Specials, like the dead driver's. But the relatively lightweight .38's were no match for the steel-drilling, 240-grain messengers of death thundering from the Executioner's cannon. After a few snap shots the goons dropped from sight, obviously waiting for him to exhaust his magazine.
The Merc's windshield was holed in two places; the laminated glass starred but held. Apart from the last of a rear window there was, so far as Bolan could see, no other damage. He braced himself for the shock, steering the G-Wagen hard at the Audi's rear quarter.