Operation Stranglehold

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “Hey, look!” the blond youth called. “Reinforcements!”

  I left Erikson’s tree and crawled over beside him. A black sedan was parked beside the Jeep. Three men in civilian clothes were conferring with the uniformed men. Then the civilians went over to the sad-looking group of recaptured prisoners and began what was obviously an interrogation. I got the impression that the uniformed men didn’t approve of this usurpation of what they probably considered to be their inalienable rights.

  There was a grunting sound beside me. When I turned my head, Erikson was dragging himself into position beside me so he could see. The interrogation on the roadway below had proceeded to a brisk punching-around. “D’you think they’re trying to find out if you went over the cliff in the Opel?” I asked Erikson.

  “They’re looking for Lisa,” Walter Croswell said. “Her old man is Herr Dokter Levenkol Draznek of the Sloven-ska Vysoka Skola Technicka in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. He’s head of an underground group about to be purged by the Soviet-influenced Czech government. She was on her way to an American consulate to get the word to the right parties when we were scooped at the border.”

  I would have asked questions, but the activity on the road below us had stopped. Prisoners were divided up between Jeep and sedan, and then both vehicles turned around to proceed in the direction the Opel had taken originally.

  “Damn funny they wouldn’t go up the road to find out what happened to the van,” I said to Karl. “And their own people.”

  “Something has a higher priority,” Erikson answered. He was looking at Walter Croswell. “If what he says is true—”

  “It’s true,” he insisted.

  “We’ve got a priority of our own, and that’s linking up with Hazel,” I said.

  We stayed in the woods while we made our way down into the valley and up the opposite steep hill. Young Croswell and the girl scrambled like mountain goats, but Erikson needed a lot of help. He was so pale his lips were blue when we reached the ledge where the prisoners had overrun the Opel.

  Hazel advanced to meet us. “Damn, damn, damn, I wish you’d left me your gun, Earl!” she said fervently. “There were just too many of them.” Her keen gaze was cataloguing our group, and her eyes remained longest on the girl. When she transferred her attention to Erikson, the shock she experienced at his appearance was visible in her face. She shook hands with him silently.

  I stood to one side while Walter Croswell introduced himself and the girl to Hazel. The redhead confronted the girl for perhaps five seconds, and then she surprised me. She opened her arms, and Lisa ran into them as though she’d come home. They hugged each other tightly.

  Hazel doesn’t wear her heart upon her sleeve ordinarily, but I had no time to reflect upon the phenomenon. “All right, everyone,” I announced. “We’re stranded on foot in the mountains, and we’re going to have to walk out.” I waved a hand at the jumbled supplies on the ground where the prisoners had dumped them. “Salvage everything serviceable that can be made up into backpacks.”

  “The food too?” Hazel asked.

  “Make a meal right now. A cold meal. We’ll have to carry that much less on our backs.” I motioned to young Croswell. “Take the girl and both of you change into anything that fits. Bury what you’re wearing now. Make sure she gets rid of all her hippie trappings.”

  Hazel gave Lisa a pair of boots. Walter and the girl picked out clothing and disappeared behind a giant boulder. “How come your Santa Claus mood, baby?” I asked Hazel while she was opening cans.

  “She’s just a scared kid, Earl. She’s no groupie.”

  “She’s a scared kid with an extra posse of police looking for her in addition to the standard brand we’ve got looking for us. She’s trouble, baby. We’ve got to dump her.”

  “Dump her? In these mountains?” Hazel shook her head. “You can’t do it, Earl. She’s just a kid.”

  “I don’t care if she’s the second coming of the Virgin Mary!” I said heatedly. “I don’t care—”

  I pulled myself up. I’d learned long ago to deflect the redhead’s head-on assaults upon good sense. I’d take care of the girl later.

  I went over to Erikson and squatted down beside him.

  CHAPTER V

  I handed Karl my map. “I wish this thing was more detailed,” I said. “Any idea which way we should go?”

  He studied the map briefly and then settled a blunt forefinger upon one section of it. “There’s a side road here that leads to a village with a railroad connection,” he replied. “It will be watched, but it’s the best chance. I can see you intended to pass the group off as hikers in the mountains, and it might work. The village is about two days’ walk from here, maybe less if we use what daylight we have left now.”

  “Can young Croswell speak Spanish?”

  “Fluently. He’s not a bad kid, Earl.” It seemed we were overloaded with not-bad kids. “I know he comes on strong, but he was born to it. When they were giving me a hard time in that stinking border detention prison, he did what he could. He didn’t have to try.”

  “I’d have thought they’d keep you two separated.”

  Erikson’s shake of the head was rueful. “My hijack attempt was so quickly aborted that the Spanish narcs never realized it was young Croswell I was attempting to release. He didn’t, either, until I had a chance to talk to him later.”

  “Didn’t the police offer to fix your arm?”

  “Only to splint it without setting it. Claimed they didn’t have a doctor available. I was afraid of ending up with a permanently crooked arm.”

  Walter Croswell and Lisa reappeared from behind the boulder. They looked natural in the rough hiking clothes, although the girl’s were too large for her. She went at once to help Hazel. That suited my purpose perfectly. I left Erikson and drew young Croswell to one side. “What’s the setup with the girl?” I asked.

  He eyed me levelly. “I met her in Yugoslavia, if that’s what you mean. I was just knocking around Europe. I’d known her a couple of weeks, and we were beginning to hit it off before she told me she had a problem. I was trying to get her to the American consulate in Madrid when I forgot about the glassined envelope of Mary Jane I had in my things. For some reason Lisa wouldn’t consider trying for help in France.”

  “You know she can’t go with us, Walter,” I said.

  “The hell she can’t!” he flared. “I’m not going anywhere without her!”

  “I’ve got papers for you, but she has none. The first time we’re stopped, we’ll all be gone.”

  “I don’t care! My father’s paying for this, isn’t he? Then we’ll damn well do it my way!”

  “You’ll be eating shit with a shovel soon if that’s your attitude!” I told him with some heat of my own. “You should understand something, Walter. My assignment is to keep anyone from exploiting your old man because of your involvement here. If I have to bury you in a hillside to keep you out of trouble, I think the people who sent me would be satisfied.”

  “Who the hell do you think you’re scaring? My father—”

  “Fuck your father,” I said as unpleasantly as I could. “I’m running this show, and the minute you get out of line I’ll feed your ass to the buzzards.”

  He stalked away from me, red in the face.

  I rejoined Hazel who was setting out the food. “What was that shouting match all about?” she wanted to know.

  “A little difference of opinion about who was in charge.”

  “You’re not still thinking about abandoning the girl?”

  “I certainly am.”

  “You couldn’t be that heartless!”

  “Damn it all, smarten up, baby. She’s a millstone. Nobody invited her to come.”

  “Suppose I don’t care to get smart?”

  “What the hell are you, her mother?” I demanded angrily. “Serve the goddam food. We’ve got to put as many miles as possible between us and this place before dark.”

  It was a lousy meal.

/>   We ate with no one looking at each other.

  Afterward I parceled out the backpacks, keeping the two-man tents for myself. When we got started, our progress was lousy too. Erikson could make no time at all. I didn’t dare use the road, and his hurts and his weakened condition slowed him down while we struggled through the woods bordering the road on the side opposite the sheer drop.

  Late in the afternoon we reached the side road he had mentioned. It looked less traveled, and there was better cover. “It’s an old, old road,” Karl said to me tiredly during one of the too-frequent rest stops. “In one area further on, the Romans may have carved it out of rock walls. There used to be a sheep path a hundred yards or so above it, out of sight of the road.”

  “That’s for us if it’s still there,” I said at once.

  I took Walter Croswell along, and we scouted the area. The kid moved well. He weaved his way up the hillside almost upright, while I was grabbing at bushes to support me. We found the sheep path and followed it for a bit. It wound around tight corners, but it was fairly level.

  Croswell and I returned to the group. “We’re going upstairs,” I said. “The longer we stay on the roads the better target we become.”

  It was one hell of a job getting Karl Erikson up to the sheep path, and we proceeded at a snail’s pace after he had partially recovered from the effort. Walter and Lisa went on ahead while Hazel and I stayed with the gray-faced Erikson. His condition was such that I had serious doubts about the success of the project. We simply couldn’t move as slowly as we were at the moment and hope to stay away from the police.

  Around sunset I began to look for a camping site. Clouds had blown up and covered the hills. The air felt damp. I found an open area near a small hillside spring, and we pitched the tents. Hazel and I set up one, and Walter and Lisa the other. He set theirs up as though he’d had a lot of camping experience. It was the only bonus I’d discovered on the trip to date.

  Hazel and I put Erikson into our tent. The kids disappeared into the other. After about an hour, faint sounds emanating from their tent indicated they were healthy. Hazel looked at me and smiled. It’s ironic that something that’s life and death to you while you’re participating is funny when it happens to someone else.

  We were in our sleeping bags under the stars, not wanting to crowd Karl. Naturally, sometime during the night it started to rain. We ignored it for awhile, but finally it was coming down in buckets. We had to shift inside the tent with Erikson. He was muttering to himself in uneasy slumber. Hazel placed a hand on his forehead. “He has a fever,” she said softly.

  We stretched out uncomfortably, but at least we were out of the rain.

  And after awhile I drifted off to sleep again.

  • • •

  Sunrise was screened by a dense, gloomy-looking overcast. The same low clouds or their cousins shrouded the hills above us, and at our level a chill, clammy mist swirled through the trees. In the pale morning light, Erikson’s eyes were red-rimmed. I had heard him moving restlessly during the night. He ate hardly anything of our hurried breakfast. When we started along the trail again, he offered only a token protest to Hazel’s sympathetic offer of a supporting arm.

  Despite Erikson, I set a pace that had everyone perspiring within the first quarter of an hour although the air was chill. We had to make time. The narrow trail wound through craggy terrain contours, frequently breaking in and out of wooded areas. Walter Croswell followed me, never more than few yards away, with the slender Lisa close to him. Much farther back, Hazel and Erikson brought up the rear.

  The path moved across an exposed section of hillside where low bushes clung to the barren soil. The track had literally been hacked out of the mountainside. I would have been concerned at our exposure except that we could no longer see the roadway below because of overhang. Even so, I became uneasy at traversing open spaces amounting to hundreds of feet.

  “Take five,” I told the group. “I’ll be right back.”

  Erikson slumped to the ground heavily. Hazel looked down at him anxiously. Lisa lit two cigarettes and handed one to Walter. From time to time her eyes strayed to me, her expression enigmatic. They were conversing quietly when I moved along the trail.

  Two thousand yards ahead, the path angled abruptly around a rocky outcropping, and then the trail petered out. I could visualize a stolid procession of sheep coming to its end and fanning out over a slanting mountain meadow with patches of grass. The pitch of the hillside beyond was so steep that I felt the women would have trouble traversing it, and Erikson, hurt as he was, couldn’t make it.

  I returned to the group and reported. “It’s risky, but we’ve got to go down to the road,” I concluded.

  The slope down to the road at our present spot produced no enthusiasm when looked at. Walter Croswell walked to the edge of the path, which was perforated with the imprint of small hooves, and studied the descent. “It’s not too bad,” he said finally. “It always appears worse looking down, especially if you haven’t climbed the up-slope first. We can make it.” He looked at Erikson, and then away.

  “Where are the Sherpas?” Hazel asked in dismay, examining the steep-slanting, treacherous-looking downgrade that assured uncertain footing.

  “I’ve backpacked in the Sierras,” Walter said. “And climbed a bit in the Tetons. Not that it’s my favorite hobby. I’ve got a touch of acrophobia.” He glanced down the rocky hillside again. “I’d rather be going up than down, but that’s not the answer.”

  I hadn’t thought he’d admit a weakness of any kind. It was the first touch of humanity I’d seen in him. “The only way out is down,” I said.

  So we started down.

  It wasn’t as bad as it looked, fortunately. The rest of us could have made it with a minimum of difficulty, but Erikson was another matter. Young Croswell carefully bracketed the obviously suffering big man between himself and Hazel, but even with their help he could barely make it. I noticed that Walter never looked at the slope farther down.

  Lisa skidded on loose rubble once, sprawled, and slid for a dozen feet. She bounded to her feet lithely, rubbing her behind which had fetched up smartly against a stump and checked her descent. We had run out of grassy area entirely and were scrabbling our way down bare rock when the road suddenly appeared below us to my relief.

  We made it down to the dusty surface, winded, sweaty, and with a few more clothing rips than when we’d started. Erikson wouldn’t have been able to continue much longer even with the double-barreled help from Walter and Hazel.

  The road was too well maintained for my liking. It meant it might be well traveled. A heavy guardrail—a thick ribbon of steel—was firmly bolted to stubby posts lining the outer edge of the road below which the mountainside once again descended, even more abruptly. If we heard something coming, it would be difficult to climb the bank on the high side in time to hide.

  Hazel caught up to me after we’d been walking on the road for twenty minutes. “It’s damn poor country for hitchhikers,” she said. “You’d think some kind of car or truck or even an ox-cart would’ve shown up before now.”

  “I’m damn glad they haven’t,” I said emphatically, then considered her meaning. “You have in mind another hijacking?”

  “I thought you’d never notice the smoke coming out of my boots.”

  “Too risky,” I said. “But it’s odd something hasn’t come along. I wonder if the police have set up a roadblock to—”

  Hazel grabbed my arm. “Listen!” she hissed.

  We all stopped dead in the roadway.

  I could hear something, but I couldn’t identify it. “Take cover!” I snapped. Hazel and I scrambled into a shallow ditch next to the face of the cut we’d been paralleling. Water trickled through it, but we plopped into it belly-down regardless. I could see Hazel squirming as the icy water slowly penetrated her heavy hiking clothes. I wasn’t feeling too comfortable myself.

  I could still hear the sound, but it wasn’t getting any louder. Th
en I heard something that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. There was a splashing sound directly behind us. I whirled; the Luger seemed to sprout in my hand. Walter Croswell was staring into its snout. “Don’t you ever do that!” I growled. “When I tell you to take cover, you freeze till I unfreeze you. Got it?”

  He nodded, but with a defiant look. His thinned lips demonstrated his inner anger at his unaccustomed order-taking.

  “Everybody stay put,” I ordered. I went along the ditch on hands and knees. The sound grew louder. I suddenly realized that it was running water. Even so, when I inched around the next bend in the road, I wasn’t prepared for a full-scale road washout from a heavy waterflow cascading down the hillside.

  A yawning twenty-foot gap extended between the ragged road edges. It was perfectly clear now why no traffic had come along the road. There was undoubtedly a roadblock, all right, but only to keep travelers from using it. I walked to the closest edge and looked down. A sheer drop of fifty feet gaped below me. The opposite side had similarly been cut almost cleanly away by the irresistible force of a flash-flood.

  “All clear!” I shouted.

  Hazel and Walter joined me first, squeezing water from their sodden clothing. “A real wipe-out,” young Croswell pronounced after his first look.

  Erikson was just as succinct when he arrived wearily at the unexpected chasm. “A dead end,” he said after a glance at the bare cliffs above and below.

  “It’s past time for lunch, anyway,” Hazel suggested. When I made no objection, she unshipped her knapsack and made dry sandwiches. We munched on these after Walter and I had succeeded in easing Erikson from his feet with his back against a boulder. I attempted to engage him in conversation once, but he sat with eyes closed as if he hadn’t heard me.

  When I looked around, the females had disappeared. I had a little privacy in mind myself, so I scrambled up the steep ascent just before the washout. I picked out a likely-looking bush, but it must have been magnetized. When I rounded it, Hazel and Lisa were there. The girl was standing with her breeches at her ankles and her pants down while Hazel rubbed liniment upon a bruise adorning a sleek, plump buttock.