Mack Bolan and Matt Stevens held their breath. When Cohen flicked on the light, its blaze cast a stark white rectangle on the corridor floor. The sudden blaze was followed by silence. Something was wrong.
"Fancy meeting you here." The voice belonged to Eli Cohen.
He wasn't talking to Rachel. Bolan eased closer to the doorway. He couldn't risk charging the room unless he had an idea where Cohen was.
On the opposite side of the door, Stevens fingered his rifle nervously.
"You know, Cohen, I never did like you." The voice was low and rasping, full of Hollywood menace — a wise guy putting on a show for his buddies.
"The four of you never did much for me, either," Cohen said. He was raising his voice just slightly.
Bolan smiled. Eli was telling him what he needed to know.
"I guess those AK-47's make you big deals, huh?" Cohen continued.
"Hey, Bobby," another voice joined in. "What are we wasting time for? Why don't we get it over with? I don't like it down here."
When Bolan got through, he'd like it a lot less.
"What, exactly, is it that you have to finish?" Cohen's tone was mocking. He wanted to get them on edge, but knew he couldn't push them too far too soon. "You know, you guys won't make it out of here, no matter what happens to me."
"Says who?" Bobby demanded. "You?"
"Not me, no. But think about it for a minute. Who are you working for? Not Peter Achison. He's a gofer just like you. The Russian is pulling your strings. And when he's got what he wants, he's gonna cut them. Dead."
"No way, man. When we finish here, it's gonna be hot sun and sandy beaches for me."
"I wouldn't count on it. You never know where you're gonna wash up once you're cut loose."
"Let's just grease the bastard and get on with it," a third voice said.
"Shut up, everybody. Cohen, put your gun on the floor. Slowly. Then turn around." Bobby must have sensed the play slipping away from him. He was trying to force things back into his control.
Bolan heard the clink of the Ingram on the concrete floor. He moved. Wheeling back away from the door, he sprayed hellfire into the room.
Eli was bent over, and the bullets skimmed just over his stooped form. At the first sound, he dived for a corner of the room, rolled once and slammed into the wall.
The four men inside were taken by surprise.
Bolan's first burst of fire caught Bobby in the throat. Blood spouted from three holes just below his shoulder line. Stunned by the impact of .45 caliber slugs he slammed back into the wall, but refused to fall.
As Bolan sprayed a figure eight to the left of the dying man, he caught a second punk in the shoulder. The bonecracking slaughter chewed him to pieces before he dropped.
Bolan stood framed in the doorway, an easy target, but there was no other way. Matt Stevens slipped in behind him. Down on one knee, he sprayed his own death stream into the room like an angry fireman hosing down a three-alarmer.
The two remaining men had taken refuge behind a standard-issue steel desk. Bolan slammed a new magazine into the Ingram. He drilled the desk with cold fury, working his fire in a wavy line. Hole after deadly hole opened in the flimsy sheet metal. The desk shuddered, slowly sliding back toward the wall.
Bolan entered the office as Eli retrieved his weapon. Eli walked to the desk and pushed it aside. His shoulders arched, and with a rush he spewed the contents of his stomach. He shook his head as if to clear it, spitting to rid his mouth of the bilious aftertaste. "I don't think I'll ever get used to this," he said.
But Bolan was transformed. His large frame seemed made of harder steel. The set of his jaw was something Cohen hadn't seen before. The Executioner was all business. He crammed a new magazine into the Ingram and tossed the empty one over the ruined desk. It clanged once and was still.
Cohen recognized the sound. It was a death knell.
"So where the hell are they keeping her?" Bolan asked the question as if the walls should answer him.
"There are a few more rooms down here," Stevens said. "If she's on this level, we should be able to find her."
"We'd better."
Cohen said nothing.
"Let's hit it then."
Bolan started down the hall, moving away from the elevator bank. He tried the first door, banging it back against the inner wall with a dull echo. He clicked on the light, but the room was empty. Stevens moved on to the next. It, too, was deserted. Cohen came up empty on the third.
On the fourth try, the door was locked.
"Check those bastards, Eli. One of them might have a master key." Cohen sprinted back down the hall to the scene of the firefight. In a minute he was back, dangling a key on a heavy metal ring.
The intricately etched key ground in the lock. The door opened with a cavernous boom. Bolan flicked the light. The room seemed as empty as the others.
Then something caught Bolan's eye. It was a shoe, lying just to the side of the office desk that occupied one corner.
The Executioner ran, to the desk and pushed it aside. Rachel was lying on her back, her eyes closed. "I've got her! Give me a hand!"
He knelt beside the still form.
"Rachel, Rachel. Can you hear me?"
Cohen and Stevens pressed in behind him, but Bolan was oblivious to them. He chafed the woman's wrists, then patted her cheeks gently.
Cohen marveled at the gentleness of the huge hands.
Too frightened that she might not respond, Cohen turned away. He closed his eyes. His fists were white.
Then, there was a moan. Music to their cars.
"Rachel, it's me, Mack." Bolan bent closer, placing an ear to her lips. He noticed they were raw. A large bruise on her check had faded, but it didn't escape his eye.
"Eli? Is Eli there?"
"Yes, Rachel, he's here." Bolan's memory returned to another frail form, in another place. That woman hadn't been so lucky.
He helped Rachel to sit, and Cohen slipped in beside him. Mack Bolan stood while Eli Cohen continued to revive his sister. As he watched the two of them, he remembered the pain of his own sister's loss. So many victims. The war went on and on. And always it was the innocent who suffered. It didn't matter that Rachel had more guts than most, had chosen to fight back. Compared to the animals, compared even to himself, Rachel Peres was an innocent.
It was she, and those like her, who made the war necessary. And who made it possible to continue. And he would continue.
For sure.
Her voice roused him. It was weak, sure, but it sounded no less determined than the last time he had seen her.
"We have to get a move on," Matt Stevens said. "Judging by that plume of steam we saw on the way over, the reactor is getting hot. Fast. If we're going to take these bastards down, we have to do it now."
"I know," Bolan said. "Don't worry. We'll take them down. Hard."
Rachel struggled to her feet, and Cohen assisted her to a seat behind the desk. "Rachel," he said. His voice was so soft that Bolan barely heard it. "We need help. Do you have any idea what's supposed to happen here?"
"They're going to trigger a meltdown. They're draining the reactor coolant. When they're ready, they'll pull the control rods for the final step."
"The hostages. What about the hostages? What are they going to do with them? Do you have any idea?"
"I heard Glinkov talking. I think he said they're going to be put in the building with the reactor. Something about the radiation helping them out."
"The containment building," Stevens said. "The radiation level is already up in there. That's where that steam came from. If he uncovers the core of that reactor, the radiation will kill anybody inside. And when the fuel burns, that place will be so hot, nobody will be able to get in there for years."
"That's just what the bastard wants," Bolan said.
"Enough time to cover his ass. And a shutdown of all the nuke plants in the country."
"How many men, Eli? How many left?"
"Twelve, I think."
"And where the hell is Parsons? And Achison?"
"I saw Parsons a couple of hours ago," Rachel said. "I don't know where he is now. Or even if he's still alive. Achison is supposed to bring a chopper in for Glinkov's getaway."
Andrey Glinkov watched the dials. The needle on the containment building radiation level was still rising. At ten thousand rems it would be time to move the hostages. The television monitors flickered as they jumped from one image to another. In the bottom of the cooling tower, he could see the water slowly rising. It was highly radioactive waste water leaking from the reactor pressure container. As the core heated, seals and joints on the coolant conduit system began to give, spilling waste water indiscriminately. Radioactive hydrogen was beginning to accumulate at the top of the cooling tower.
The gas was generated by the breakup of the remaining coolant water. An errant spark would detonate the explosive gas. Unless the volume was large, the four-foot-thick concrete walls of the containment building should be equal to the task.
Pressure valves released the gas, together with radioactive steam, whenever the pressure grew too great. Already the runaway reactor had begun to leak deadly gas into the atmosphere around the plant. In the cold air, the radioactive steam condensed in small, deadly clouds for a few moments. Then, borne on a stiff winter wind, it vanished into thin air to become a slowly drifting invisible killing zone.
The temperature gauge was most interesting. It was slowly climbing as the coolant drained away, rushing into the complex of concrete tunnels that honeycombed the earth under the plant. It was already nearly six hundred degrees in the containment building, and the core was hotter still. Glinkov was still unaware of Robbins's ploy. With the evacuation pump out of action, the water was running off at a slower rate than was possible. And the tunnel exits were still sealed.
From time to time, the Russian glanced at the security monitors, but his hands were full. He had no time to watch what was going on in the bowels of the plant. Had he been more alert, he might have seen three men and a woman move past one of the cameras on Level 4.
Had he been more attentive still, he might have seen another shadowy figure as well. This one moved with less urgency, seeming almost lost in its tentative wandering through the maze of underground corridors. He hadn't heard from the hit team waiting for Eli Cohen. It was taking a long time.
On the other hand, perhaps Cohen had simply taken as long to get below as he had to check the plant perimeter. Death is patient, Glinkov knew.
Cohen's time would come soon enough. And that would leave one final victim.
Mack Bolan.
Surely he wouldn't fail to show. Everything in his KGB files said that he would. A man who dared to chew at the Soviet beast from its very heart as Bolan had done in Moscow itself, wouldn't balk at the opportunity so carefully and generously extended to him here.
By his own estimate, Glinkov had less than an hour. Achison would be arriving in fifty minutes. By then he would have completed his sabotage of the reactor. The hostages would long since have been sealed in the containment building, to be found God knows when, but certainly long after their discovery would be a threat to him. That left only the assault team itself to deal with.
They, too, were expendable. Their work finished, some of their number would turn on the others. They would be eliminated quickly and painlessly. He and Achison would finish the job from the chopper.
Years later, with little left but radioactive bones, no one would care how they had died. They would be written off as victims of the tragic accident of Thunder Mountain — if anyone still cared.
It was time to check on the hostages.
Glinkov gestured to the sentry posted outside the backup control room. "How are our guests, Warren? Resting comfortably, I trust?"
Warren smiled before answering. "Hell, yes. They don't have a care in the world."
"It will be time to move them very shortly. You had better get the rest of the team. We'll need them for the last part of our operation."
"Where to?"
"On Level 4. There's a double-airlock entrance to the reactor containment building down there."
"What about Cohen?"
"Don't worry about him."
"Bobby taking care of him?"
Glinkov nodded.
"Too bad. I wanted to waste him myself," Warren said. "That bastard was getting way too big for his boots."
"I shouldn't wonder," Glinkov said. "Mossad agents are not known for their modesty."
"Mossad! Are you kidding?"
"Most assuredly not."
"Why'd you wait so long to ice him?"
"He was useful. A man should never lose an opportunity to let an opponent do his work for him. It is most efficient. Even Moscow Center is budget conscious these days. Tools are everywhere, Warren. But it takes a craftsman to recognize them. And an artist to make the most of them."
"Yeah," Warren said, laughing. "I guess you could teach a course on that subject."
"Perhaps I will, Warren. Perhaps I will. Even you might learn something."
"I'll bet," Warren said.
Glinkov just smiled.