The massive iron grille protecting the utility's front smashed into the sedan's rear wheel and trunk, mangling the bodywork and rupturing the fuel tank. Gasoline splashed out as the Audi tipped over onto its side with a screech of crumpled steel.
Bolan rocked the G-Wagen to a halt and leaped down behind one of the boulders. Big Thunder's magazine was empty but now he held the Beretta 93-R in his hand. Folding down the forward hand grip, he sighted carefully and loosed off a single shot.
The slug was well aimed, striking the rock on which the Audi had foundered at a shallow angle and ricocheting away in a shower of sparks. The inflammable vapor rising from the savaged fuel tank ignited with a dull thump. An instant later the gasoline remaining in the tank exploded, transforming the capsized Audi into a blazing fireball.
From beneath the boiling, black-tinged maelstrom a scarecrow figure erupted, beating ineffectually at its flaming clothes with charred hands.
Bolan fired a mercy round to terminate the hood's agony.
The last man the one the Executioner was determined to keep alive dashed out from behind the holocaust and headed for a rock shelf, firing from the hip as he ran.
Bolan dropped him in midstride with an auto 3-shot aimed low. The hardman's gun skittered from his hands as he dropped, writhing, with shattered knees.
Bolan ran across and hauled the guy to his feet, one big hand bunched in the anonymous gray coveralls.
"Okay, hotshot," he snarled, "time to start talking, now!" He shook the injured gunman fiercely in his grasp.
The man's eyes, almost colorless, showed neither fear nor hate nor even shock. His face was expressionless; only the teeth sunk into his lower lip revealed the effort he was making not to scream aloud at the pain scything his splintered kneecaps.
Bolan jammed the Beretta's muzzle against the man's forehead, let him see the trigger finger whitening in the squeeze.
"Who the hell are you?" the Executioner grated. "Who sent you? And why are you trying to kill me?"
The wounded killer choked. His hand flew to his mouth.
Suddenly he smiled up into the big guy's face.
And shuddered.
Bolan realized too late that this was no involuntary hand gesture provoked by a spasm of agony, no expression of humor, however grim.
The lips were drawn back from discolored teeth by a fearful rictus.
The body stiffened and then went limp.
The head flopped forward and an acrid almond odor caused Bolan to release his grip in a reflex of horror.
The guy had bitten on a cyanide pill rather than talk.
Bolan released his breath in a long sigh of frustration.
"Damn!" he said forcefully.
His ruse to decoy the assassins out into the open had worked exactly the way he had planned it.
And he had ended up as he started... knowing precisely nothing.
What now?
He shrugged. The car-rental agency would be surprised when he turned in a 300-GD off-roader that was worth five thousand bucks more than the Colt he had hired even if the Mercedes needed a certain amount of attention to the rear window and windshield. But once he had handled that little problem, he decided, he would continue with his vacation as planned.
And if the mysterious organization that seemed so anxious to waste him followed him down below the ice cap... well, he'd tackle that one when it happened.
He returned to the G-Wagen and headed for the trail that wound back up the escarpment.
4
A Russian factory ship loomed above the trawlers and tugs berthed along the waterfront at Akureyri.
"Loaded to the gunwales with surveillance equipment," the man wearing the watch cap said to Bolan. "We know it, and they know we know it, but nobody does nothing about it."
"That so?" the Executioner said casually.
"No trawlermen aboard that ship." The sailor spit into the sawdust at his feet. "Soviet navy specialists, most of 'em. They take our fish and louse up the goddam breeding grounds, but mainly they use those boats to keep tabs on shipping movements, NATO maneuvers and suchlike."
They were in a tavern on the wharf.
It was the first time in many missions, but since he was supposed to be enjoying a well-earned R and R. the soldier had decided to sink a few beers. The man in the watch cap, perched on the next bar stool, had started talking as soon as he sat down.
"How come they dock in your town?" Bolan asked.
"There's a NATO goodwill flotilla heading this way frigates from Britain, the U.S., West Germany and Norway and like I say, they aim to keep tabs. Times they refuel, too, or take shelter from the big storms. It can get kind of rugged out there." The sailor nodded toward the shower of arctic spray exploding over the seawall outside the windowpanes. "They got a right to put in anyway," he added, "We buy our oil from the Soviets. And they started in on a mining concession over by Husavik, in the northeast, a few months past."
"Oh, yeah? Mining what?" Bolan wasn't really interested but it cost nothing to be polite. "Search me."
The Icelander shrugged.
"Minerals. Whatever. They got some crazy rock formations out there. It seems the Russians are flying in plenty of heavy equipment through the airstrip at Husavik."
Bolan signaled the bartender and bought his companion a beer.
"Skoal!" The guy raised his glass and drank. He shook his head. "Crazy world, too, ain't it? Your Navy people use the Keflavik base to monitor the movement of Soviet warships and subs toward the North Atlantic; the Reds use their boats to monitor the movements of your fleet... meantime the seabed is a garbage dump of nuclear waste and listening devices."
"Listening devices?"
"Sure." The seaman laughed. "You know what? Last week one of our coast-guard patrol vessels fished up what looked like a rusted mine that had been floating in the water since World War I." He paused for effect. "It was packed with electronic gadgetry so delicate you could have heard the skipper of a nuclear killer sub shaving!"
Bolan laughed dutifully. The conversation was beginning to tire him.
He was on vacation, dammit. In any case he had heard it all before.
He finished his beer, told the sailor in the watch cap goodbye and left. It was a long, tortuous drive to Egilsstadir a hundred miles in a straight line, almost twice that following Iceland's primitive, twisting roads and he wanted to make it before the light started to fade.
Egilsstadir was located in a long valley brimming with one of the very few forests in the country. The birch and aspen plantations were no more than twelve feet high, but they grew thickly and they were easy on the eye after grueling hours spent circumnavigating the interminable indented fjords gashing the bleak and treeless coastline.
At one point the road crossed the Jokulsa a Fjollum, the river he was to follow in his kayak, on a high, arched bridge of prestressed concrete.
Surmounting a bluff some way downstream, he could see hoists and gantries in the center of a camp that housed, he supposed, the engineers exploiting the Russian mining concession.
The airport at Egilsstadir was a single asphalt runway and a small terminal shack. It was also something like a theater restricted to two shows daily one for the morning Icelandair flight from Reykjavik and one for the afternoon. In between, the apron was deserted, the terminal as silent as the surrounding forest. Two guards, changing shift every four hours, patrolled the perimeter and guarded a freight shed where Bolan's gear should by now be stored.