Running Blind / The Freedom Trap. Desmond Bagley
cheeks as she ate. I insisted that she didn’t use her right hand and she didn’t have to – the dark, tender flesh fell away from the quail at the touch of a fork and she managed all right. I made coffee and we accompanied it with brandy which I carried for medicinal purposes.
As she sipped her coffee she sighed. ‘Just like old times, Alan.’
‘Yes,’ I said lazily. I was feeling much better myself. ‘But you’d better sleep. We make an early start tomorrow.’ I calculated it would be light enough to move at three a.m. when the rivers would also be at their lowest. I leaned over and took the binoculars.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘Just to have a look around. You go to bed.’
Her eyes flickered sleepily. ‘I am tired,’ she admitted.
That wasn’t surprising. We’d been on the run for a long time, and bouncing about in the Óbyggdir wasn’t helping – we’d managed to fall into every damned pothole on the track. I said, ‘Get your head down – I won’t be long.’
I hung the lanyard of the binoculars around my neck, opened the back door and dropped to the ground. I was about to walk away when I turned back on impulse, reached into the cab and picked up the carbine. I don’t think Elin saw me do that.
First I inspected the river we had to cross. It was flowing well but exposed wet stones showed that the level was already dropping. By dawn the crossing would be easy, and we should be able to get across all the other rivers that lay between us and Sprengisandur before the increased flow made it impossible.
I slung the carbine over my shoulder and walked back along the track towards the river we had crossed which lay a little over a mile away. I approached cautiously but everything was peaceful. The river flowed and chuckled and there was nothing in sight to cause alarm. I checked the distant view with the binoculars, then sat down with my back against a mossy boulder, lit a cigarette and started to think.
I was worried about Elin’s shoulder; not that there was anything particularly alarming about its condition, but a doctor would do a better job than I could, and this bouncing about the wilderness wasn’t helping. It might be difficult explaining to a doctor how Elin had come by an unmistakable gunshot wound, but accidents do happen and I thought I could get away with it by talking fast.
I stayed there for a couple of hours, smoking and thinking and looking at the river, and at the end of that time I had come up with nothing new despite my brain beating. The added factor of the American helicopter was a piece of the jigsaw that wouldn’t fit anywhere. I looked at my watch and found it was after nine o’clock, so I buried all the cigarette stubs, picked up the carbine and prepared to go back.
As I stood up I saw something that made me tense – a plume of dust in the far distance across the river. I laid down the carbine and lifted the glasses and saw the little dot of a vehicle at the head of that feather of dust like a high-flying jet at the head of a contrail. I looked around – there was no cover near the river but about two hundred yards back a spasm of long gone energy had heaved up the lava into a ridge which I could hide behind. I ran for it.
The vehicle proved to be a Willys jeep – as good for this country in its way as my Land-Rover. It slowed as it came to the river, nosed forward and came to a stop at the water’s edge. The night was quiet and I heard the click of the door handle as a man got out and walked forward to look at the water. He turned and said something to the driver and, although I could not hear the words, I knew he was speaking neither Icelandic nor English.
He spoke Russian.
The driver got out, looked at the water and shook his head. Presently there were four of them standing there, and they seemed to be having an argument. Another jeep came up behind and more men got out to study the problem until there were eight in all – two jeeps full. One of them, the one who made the decisive gestures and who seemed to be the boss, I thought I recognized.
I lifted the glasses and his face sprang into full view in the dimming light. Elin had been wrong; crossing the river had not been an unjustifiable risk, and the justification lay in the face I now saw. The scar was still there, running from the end of the right eyebrow to the corner of the mouth, and the eyes were still grey and hard as stones. The only change in him was that his close-cropped hair was no longer black but a grizzled grey and his face was puffier with incipient wattles forming on his neck.
Kennikin and I were both four years older but I think I may have worn better than he had.
I put my hand out to the carbine and then paused. The light was bad and getting worse, the gun was strange and it hadn’t the barrel to reach out and knock a man down at a distance. I estimated the range at a shade under three hundred yards and I knew that if I hit anyone at that range and in that light it would be by chance and not by intention.
If I had my own gun I could have dropped Kennikin as easily as dropping a deer. I have put a soft-nosed bullet into a deer and it has run for half a mile before dropping dead, and that with an exit wound big enough to put your fist in. A man can’t do that – his nervous system is too delicate and can’t stand the shock.
But I hadn’t my own rifle, and there was no percentage in opening fire at random. That would only tell Kennikin I was close, and it might be better if he didn’t know. So I let my fingers relax from the carbine and concentrated on watching what was going to happen next.
The arguing had stopped with Kennikin’s arrival, and I knew why, having worked with him. He had no time for futile blathering; he would accept your facts – and God help you if they were wrong – and then he would make the decisions. He was busily engaged in making one now.
I smiled as I saw someone point out the tracks of the Land-Rover entering the water and then indicate the other bank of the river. There were no tracks where we had left the water because we had been swept sideways a little, and that must have been puzzling to anyone who hadn’t seen it happen.
The man waved downstream eloquently but Kennikin shook his head. He wasn’t buying that one. Instead he said something, snapping his fingers impatiently, and someone else rushed up with a map. He studied it and then pointed off to the right and four of the men got into a jeep, reversed up the track, and then took off across country in a bumpy ride.
That made me wrinkle my brows until I remembered there was a small group of lakes over in that direction called Gaesavötn. If Kennikin expected me to be camping at Gaesavötn he’d draw a blank, but it showed how thorough and careful he was.
The crew from the other jeep got busy erecting a camp just off the track, putting up tents rather inexpertly. One of them went to Kennikin with a vacuum flask and poured out a cup of steaming hot coffee which he offered obsequiously. Kennikin took it and sipped it while still standing at the water’s edge looking across the impassable river. He seemed to be staring right into my eyes.
I lowered the glasses and withdrew slowly and cautiously, being careful to make no sound. I climbed down from the lava ridge and then slung the carbine and headed back to the Land-Rover at a fast clip, and checked to make sure there were no tyre marks to show where we had left the track. I didn’t think Kennikin would have a man swim the river – he could lose a lot of men that way – but it was best to make sure we weren’t stumbled over too easily.
Elin was asleep. She lay on her left side, buried in her sleeping bag, and I was thankful that she always slept quietly and with no blowing or snoring. I let her sleep; there was no reason to disturb her and ruin her night. We weren’t going anywhere, and neither was Kennikin. I switched on my pocket torch shading it with my hand to avoid waking her, and rummaged in a drawer until I found the housewife, from which I took a reel of black thread.
I went back to the track and stretched a line of thread right across it about a foot from the ground, anchoring