Josepsson's car had turned off the main highway and was heading across a rock-strewn cinder field toward a pair of mounds on the horizon.
Paul slowed down until the Icelander's car had topped the rise and had disappeared on the other side. Then it sped up again, turning off the highway and following the same track.
"You'd better stop before we get to the top," Ari said. "No telling how quickly he pulled up over on the other side."
Paul nodded, and just before the crest of the hill, he brought the car to a halt. All three of them jumped out, Uzi submachine guns in hand, and hurried the rest of the way to the top on foot.
Josepsson's car was nowhere in sight. But the dirt track led off to the right about two hundred and fifty yards, going between two mounds that looked like the breasts of a gigantic woman lying back.
"Roberta and I will have a look-see," Ari said to Paul, "while you bring up the car."
"No heroics," Paul said, and he went back to the car as Ari and Roberta headed down the dirt track that Josepsson's car had to have followed.
Paul was just coming over the crest of the hill when she and Ari rounded the curve. She had expected to see the road continuing off into the distance. Instead, across the far side of the mound was a large steel door, almost like an air raid shelter. It was open.
One of Josepsson's gigantic men popped out from below and immediately opened fire.
Ari raised the Uzi and fired from the hip, catching the man in the chest, spinning him around and back inside.
Paul came up with the car, jumped out, and raced over to them.
"What happened?"
"One of Josepsson's guys," Ari said.
The three of them approached the open door cautiously. Josepsson's man lay dead on the floor of a very large, immaculately clean room. Valves and dial faces adorned the far wall. A door off to the left was open, the sound of heavy machinery running very loud now.
Ari motioned for Paul to take the right side of the door while he and Roberta took the left. Weapons at the ready, they raced across the control room and looked down.
The door opened onto a catwalk that looked down into a two-story-deep room filled with a maze of multicolored pipes, valves, and other equipment. It was very hot here, and the noise of the machinery seemed to be changing pitch… to a much deeper, almost off-key rumbling.
The other bodyguard trotted into view below, and when he spotted them up on the catwalk, he ducked back out of sight. They returned to the control room.
"Josepsson," Ari shouted down, but his voice was lost to the noise.
The bodyguard came back around the pipes, fired several shots up at the doorway, the slugs ricocheting off the metal catwalk. Then he ran to the bottom of the stairs and started up.
Ari turned through the doorway and fired a burst down the stairs, making a bloody pulp of the man's chest, sending him tumbling backward down the stairs.
A second later Josepsson came running around the corner, waving them away and shouting something they could not hear. Ari almost shot him until he realized the man was not armed.
Josepsson got about five paces away from the corner joints of a mass of pipes when the machinery noise suddenly exploded into a cacophony of explosions, high-pitched screams, and discordant rumblings. The Icelander was engulfed in a tremendous billow of high-pressure, superheated steam, dying instantly.
"This place is going to blow!" Ari shouted, his voice all but lost. "They must have overloaded the pumps!"
They scrambled back away from the doorway, raced through the main door outside, and got to the jeep just as the ground underfoot began to shake ominously.
Paul had the jeep started as Roberta leaped in the back seat, and he spun it around in a tight circle and headed away as fast as he could shift through the gears.
They just made it over the crest of the hill when an ear-splitting explosion shattered the morning stillness, both mounds behind them rising straight up.
Whatever had been down there was not there any longer, but ail that Roberta could think about was Nick Carter, whom she was convinced now had returned to the reactor site to finish the job he had set out to do, and to rescue her.
Ziegler's car was a very large, dark Cadillac limousine. Carter started it and brought it around to the front of the house. He opened the rear car door, then went inside to the study and returned carrying Ziegler's body. He propped the body up in one corner of the back seat, strapped a seat belt around him, then headed back through Reykjavik and out to the reactor site.
At least Roberta wasn't dead yet. He had learned that much from Ziegler. Beyond that meager information he had no idea where she was or in what condition she might be in.
But he damned well was going to find out, and anyone who got in his way would be dead. Instantly.
With his Luger on the seat next to him. Carter accelerated out of town, and soon he was doing better than a hundred miles an hour down the narrow, blacktopped road. In his mind was nothing but a single direction, a single operation. And when it was finished, either he would be dead or a lot of others would be if they got in the way.
At that speed, he made it out to the turnoff in less than an hour, and he didn't slow down very much as he barreled down the dirt road, the car's heavy-duty springs bottoming out several times on the ruts.
When he came within sight of the front gate, however, he slowed down and checked in the back to make sure Ziegler's body hadn't fallen over, the general looked like a tired man staring out the window on the opposite side, lost in thought.
Carter stopped just at the gate, and the guards, recognizing the car, swung the shaky barrier open and waved them through. Carter waved back as he passed, then half turned and opened and closed his mouth as if he were talking to Ziegler.
The ruse worked, and he drove up to what he took to be the administration center, where he went behind the building to the parking area and pulled up next to a truck.
There was a lot of activity on the site today, but no one noticed as Carter reached back, unstrapped the seat belt holding Ziegler's body, and pushed it over down onto the floor, out of sight.
Pocketing his Luger, Carter got out of the car, went across the parking area, and entered the building. The place was humming with activity, and Carter stopped the first man he passed.
"Is General Ziegler's secretary still here?" he asked.
"Of course," the harried man snapped. He pointed down the corridor to the left. "She's in her office, I assume." Then he was gone.
Carter hurried down the corridor and into the reception area. A young woman was seated at a desk. "Is General Ziegler's secretary in?"
"Yes," she said. "Just through there." She pointed over her shoulder and looked up. "But the general isn't here."
"I know that," Carter said. He went around her desk and entered the general's outer office without knocking. A man in coveralls was seated on the desk, talking with a young, blond woman. They both looked up when Carter came in. The man jumped up.
"Can I help you?" he said.
Carter closed the door behind him and pulled out his Luger. "For your sake you'd better hope so," he said.
The man stepped back, nearly falling over the desk.
"Oh," the young woman said.
"There was a woman here. General Ziegler has her. Where is she?"
The man hesitated.
Carter raised the Luger and flipped the safety off. The man blanched.
"She was here. But she's gone. Two men took her."
"You're lying!" Carter snapped.
"No. I swear it. Two of them got in the compound somehow. They killed four of our people. They're gone."
"When?"
"Hours ago."
Carter didn't think he was lying. There was no reason for it. He stepped aside and motioned toward the door with his gun. "Let's go."
"Where?" the woman asked.