Facedown below the gallery railing, they returned fire. Bjornstrom's compact sixteen-inch Ingram chattered out a stream of lethal skull busters, and the Executioner's AutoMag punctuated the death stream with individual shots that bellowed beneath the cavern roof.

Two of the Russians fell forward over the rail and dropped into the dock basin, where they floated lifelessly, trailing clouds of crimson in the dark water. A third was hurled back against the wall, his arm shattering on impact.

"Okay," Bolan yelled. "Now! We've been surprised and beaten back on the way in. Let's go!"

Vaulting over the rail, they dived into the basin and swam frantically underwater for the cave entrance. With luck the guards outside on the spur wouldn't know what the hell was going on; with luck they wouldn't be in direct contact with the speaker system; with luck Bolan and his companion could stay submerged long enough, once they were through the arch, to escape their attention.

With luck.

It was when he surfaced to catch his breath beneath the arch that Bolan heard, over the sporadic shots still being fired after them, the shouts from the inner cave that were followed by a woman's scream.

With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realized that, in decoying the main body of the Russians into the second chamber, he had unwittingly delivered Erika Axelsson into the hands of the enemy.

"She is safe for another three hours," Bjornstrom said. "She does after all have the pill with her."

"The pill?" Bolan sounded incredulous. "You don't mean... Not the cyanide pills?"

"No, no. Nothing so... final. A kind of a sleeping pill, except that it acts instantly. It's a variety of chloral hydrate, your old-fashioned Mickey Finn, without the hangover. They can do nothing to her, she will hear nothing and feel nothing, until the effect wears off."

"You said three hours?"

"Four from the time she bit down on it. They give them to us in our service it leaves time to attempt a rescue before they start to torture a prisoner. There is no point administering electric shocks to someone who is how do you say? out for the count."

"But three hours from now?"

It was not quite midday. Bolan and the Icelander were holding a conference of war over glasses of Brennevin and weak local beer in a tavern on the outskirts of Pvera, on the far side of the fjord from the Russian concession.

"That means we have to bust into the place and get her out by three o'clock this afternoon, right?"

"I think so," Bjornstrom said soberly.

The mission is more important than individual members of the team this was the hard lesson Bolan had to learn in Nam, in the Mafia wars and during his subsequent anti terrorist campaign. It was a truism for military men the world over. But that didn't mean you wouldn't do your damnedest to get back a fellow fighter in enemy hands... before that operation could compromise the mission.

In any case this one was a self-imposed mission. Even if the time element had not been in favor of a quick rescue attempt, no alternative entered the Executioner's mind; no other line of action would have occurred to him. Erika was a comrade in arms. She had been captured; she must be released. As quickly as possible. It was that simple.

"How are we going to do it?" Bjornstrom said.

Before Bolan could reply, a tall, elderly man with white hair and thick-lensed glasses detached himself from a group of young people and advanced on Bolan. He held out his hand.

"Good to see you again," he said affably. "I guess you made your run down to Jokulsa after all?"

Astonished, Bolan automatically took the hand, thinking: who the hell is this? The face was vaguely familiar but he could not place it; neither the voice nor the presence stirred any connection in his memory.

"The plane," the old-timer reminded him. "The flight from Copenhagen."

Of course. Bolan remembered. So much had happened since then that he had completely forgotten the conversation with the passenger sitting next to him on the Icelandair 727.

But then an ugly doubt surfaced in his mind. Could this man be the contact who had tipped off the Russians that a guy known as the Executioner was on his way?

Uh-uh. Looking beyond the white-haired guy to the group he had left, he recalled the rest of it. They were college kids. Boys and girls. He remembered them leaving Keflavik field while he was checking out his freight, bound for the capital on a bus.

Geology students, and the old man was their professor.

"Yeah," he said in answer to the professor's question. "I finally made it. A fairly... eventful... journey. I hope your own expedition has been successful," he added politely, wondering how he could get rid of the elderly academic.

"Not as interesting as yours, I'm afraid," the professor replied. "We can't all cross the lava fields in kayaks! However, this afternoon should prove stimulating. The Russians leasing the promontory on the far side of the fjord have kindly offered to show us over the trial bores they are sinking among the igneous intrusions."

Bolan caught his breath. "The Russians?" he echoed.

"That's right. It seems there are uncharacteristic pegmatites among the amphiboles and plagioclase zones they encountered in their search for tin lodes. They promise to let us explore the upper galleries."

"What time?" Bolan asked urgently. "What time this afternoon?"

The professor raised his brows, surprised at the Executioner's tone of voice. "Three-thirty, actually," he said. "We are required to make a punctual appearance at the main gate. It seems they are rather hot on security, and we have to be escorted to the pithead."

Bolan excused himself as quickly as he could and rejoined Bjornstrom. This time he was really shaken. Not only was Erika in the hands of the Russians, a party of college kids were being shown over the upper section of the mine workings at the very time the charges they had so carefully timed were due to explode.

Somehow, within the next three hours, they had to spirit the girl away and save the students from almost certain death.

"We must go back in and alter the timing," Bjornstrom said. "Push the hour hands right back again so the charges will not go off until late this evening."

"No way." Bolan shook his head. "There are twelve of them. Each one has to be located, unwrapped, retimed, taped back in position and then concealed again. That takes a lot more time than just shoving a prepared package in among the machinery. We'd never make it; there wouldn't be enough work stoppages for one thing."

"But if we concentrated first on those nearest the shaft, the charges putting the kids in most danger?"

"We might not be able to concentrate on any. For all we know they may not be blasting at all this afternoon. Especially if they have a conducted tour planned."

"Then?.." The Icelander looked crushed.

"We'll play it another way. We'll go back in all right. But we won't touch the charges; we won't go near them. We'll simply use the caves as an entry to the surface workings."

"You're crazy."

Like a fox, Gunnar. We'll have to play it damned dose to the chest, but it can be done. We have three objectives — destroy the base, rescue Erika and save the kids, right?"

"So?"

"So what's wrong with making all three in a single operation?"

"I cannot see how it is possible," Bjornstrom said.

"I'll tell you," Bolan told him. "If we leave the charges the way they are we achieve objective number one, anyway. So all that remains is to get Erika out and stop the students going in."

"This is where I come in, Bolan. How the hell ?"

"Listen. All we have to do is get to that elevator. If they are still blasting, we do it while they're in the shelter; if not, we'll blast our own way in there. With lead. Once we make the cage, we take it to the top and come out shooting. We locate Erika... and then we stage the biggest, boldest, most ear-shattering battle the Russians have seen for a long time."