Free Blood Heat Zero by Don Pendleton Page B

one of his own guns he was too busy using the paddle to keep himself afloat. The guard was on a catwalk surrounding the concrete cabin. When the kayak was within twenty yards, he jerked the muzzle of the machine pistol in an unmistakable order stroke the kayak into dead water beneath the ledge.
    Bolan accepted the invitation.
    "You better had come up here," the gunman called in heavily accented English. "It is drier, and you can hide your boat beneath."
    The pumping station stood on a platform that projected beyond the ledge, two and a half feet above the surface of the river. Its outer edge was supported on two pillars rising from the water. Bolan unfastened his spray skirt, climbed out of the kayak and slid it in below this makeshift boathouse. He scrambled up a rocky bank and approached the guy with the gun.
    It was an Ingram MAC-11, a deadly machine pistol.
    The finger on the trigger belonged to a husky dude, almost Bolan's height, with straight blond hair above blue eyes deep set in a tanned weather-beaten face. He was wearing a fisherman's sweater, denim pants and rubber wading boots. He didn't look much like the other hardmen who had tried, unsuccessfully, to get the drop on the Executioner.
    But he looked as dangerous.
    Bolan halted two feet away at the far end of the catwalk, keeping his hands in sight and well clear of his body. He eyed the flesh-shredder held unwaveringly in the guy's big hands.
    "Who are you? What do you want?" he asked evenly realizing as he heard the sound of his own voice that these were the first words he had spoken in his own language since he led Egilsstadir almost forty-eight hours before.
    "I wish only to talk," said the man holding the Ingram. "You and me, I think we maybe are fighting on the same side."

8
    His name was Gunnar Bjornstrom. He was an Icelandic citizen, Bolan learned, but his family came from Norway.
    Before that, there was a brief interrogation.
    "You are Mack Bolan, the man known as the Executioner?"
    Bolan did not deny it.
    "More recently known as Colonel John Phoenix, of Stony Man Farm, in Virginia?"
    "Recently? It seems a long time ago," Bolan said.
    "You have waged what they call a one-man war against, first, the Mafia, and then terrorists all over the world?"
    "What of it?"
    "And lately it is against the KGB especially that you have been fighting?"
    "You are well informed."
    "It is important that I know who you are," the Icelander said.
    "Look, you've got the drop on me with that;" the soldier nodded toward the SMG. "So what do you intend to do?" Even as he spoke the warrior sensed that this man was not the enemy.
    "So what do you do in Iceland, Mr. Bolan?" Bjornstrom asked in turn, ignoring Bolan's question.
    "I'm on vacation," Bolan said.
    "A vacation? And you shoot always on vacation some Russians maybe? In caverns and along the river at night? You are on a hunting trip perhaps hunting for men?"
    "I planned to make a source-to-mouth trip along this river. Some guys tried to kill me for no apparent reason. So I killed them."
    Bjornstrom smiled. Strong teeth flashed white against the tan of his face. "I am coming upriver myself when you fight. So I halt myself to see what happen."
    "Thanks for your help!" Bolan said dryly.
    "You do not understand. First, I have to know where you fight. I mean on which side."
    "So it is a fight, is it?"
    Bjornstrom shrugged. "A fight. An investigation. A curiosity to satisfy. Call it what you want."
    "Okay, so who are you working for?"
    "I am very inquisitive man," Bjornstrom said evasively. "When I see strangers making much secret work in my country strangers who pretend they operate only a mining concession I ask myself why. I ask myself why they wish nobody along the river, why they have gunmen beneath Vatnajokull when the concession is more than one hundred miles away. I ask myself but there is no answer. So I try to find out myself."
    "You won't believe this, but I am asking myself exactly the same questions," Bolan said.
    "But