Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  The collapsed figure at my feet wasn’t going to be much use to anybody even if he did wake up, so I didn’t have to worry about him. All I had to do now was to take care of Daniel Boone—the man with the rifle. I returned to my peephole to see what he was doing.

  He was doing precisely what he had been doing ever since I had seen him—contemplating the Land-Rover with inexhaustible patience. I stood up and walked into the hollow, gun first. I didn’t worry overmuch about keeping quiet; speed was more important than quietness and I reckoned he might be more alarmed if I pussyfooted around than if I crunched up behind him.

  He didn’t even turn his head. All he did was to say in a flat Western drawl, ‘You forgotten something, Joe?’

  I caught my jaw before it sagged too far. A Russian I expected; an American I didn’t. But this was no time to worry about nationalities—a man who throws bullets at you is automatically a bastard, and whether he’s a Russian bastard or an American bastard makes little difference. I just said curtly, ‘Turn around, but leave the rifle where it is or you’ll have a hole in you.’

  He went very still, but the only part of him that he turned was his head. He had china-blue eyes in a tanned, narrow face and he looked ideal for type-casting as Pop’s eldest son in a TV horse opera. He also looked dangerous. ‘I’ll be goddamned!’ he said softly.

  ‘You certainly will be if you don’t take your hands off that rifle,’ I said. ‘Spread your arms out as though you were being crucified.’

  He looked at the pistol in my hand and reluctantly extended his arms. A man prone in that position finds it difficult to get up quickly. ‘Where’s Joe?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s gone beddy-byes.’ I walked over to him and put the muzzle of the pistol to the nape of his neck and I felt him shudder. That didn’t mean much; it didn’t mean he was afraid—I shudder involuntarily when Elin kisses me on the nape of the neck. ‘Just keep quiet,’ I advised, and picked up the rifle.

  I didn’t have time to examine it closely then, but I did afterwards, and it was certainly some weapon. It had a mixed ancestry and probably had started life as a Browning, but a good gunsmith had put in a lot of time in reworking it, giving it such refinements as a sculptured stock with a hole in it to put your thumb, and other fancy items. It was a bit like the man said, ‘I have my grandfa-ther’s axe—my father replaced the blade and I gave it a new haft.’

  What it had ended up as was the complete long-range assassin’s kit. It was bolt action because it was a gun for a man who picks his target and who can shoot well enough not to want to send a second bullet after the first in too much of a hurry. It was chambered for a .375 magnum load, a heavy 300 grain bullet with a big charge behind it—high velocity, low trajectory. This rifle in good hands could reach out half a mile and snuff out a man’s life if the light was good and the air still.

  To help the aforesaid good hands was a fantastic telescopic sight—a variable-powered monster with a top magnification of 30. To use it when fully racked out would need a man with no nerves—and thus no tremble—or a solid bench rest. The scope was equipped with its own range-finding system, a multiple mounting of graduated dots on the vertical cross hair for various ranges, and was sighted in at five hundred yards.

  It was a hell of a lot of gun.

  I straightened and rested the muzzle of the rifle lightly against my friend’s spine. ‘That’s your gun you can feel,’ I said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you what would happen if I pulled the trigger.’

  His head was turned sideways and I saw a light film of sweat coating the tan. He didn’t need to let his imagination work because he was a good craftsman and knew his tools enough to know what would happen—over 5,000 foot-pounds of energy would blast him clean in two.

  I said, ‘Where’s Kennikin?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t be childish,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask you again—where’s Kennikin?’

  ‘I don’t know any Kennikin,’ he said in a muffled voice. He found difficulty in speaking because the side of his face was pressed against the ground.

  ‘Think again.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t know him. All I was doing was following orders.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You took a shot at me.’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘At your tyre. You’re still alive, aren’t you? I could have knocked you off any time.’

  I looked down the slope at the Land-Rover. That was true; it would be like a Bisley champion shooting tin ducks at a fairground. ‘So you were instructed to stop me. Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing.’

  I increased the pressure on his spine slightly. ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘I was to wait until someone showed up and then quit and go home.’

  ‘And who was the someone?’

  ‘I don’t know—I wasn’t told.’

  That sounded crazy; it was even improbable enough to be true. I said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘John Smith.’

  I smiled and said, ‘All right, Johnny; start crawling—backwards and slowly. And if I see more than half an inch of daylight between your belly and the ground I’ll let you have it.’

  He wriggled back slowly and painfully away from the edge and down into the hollow, and then I stopped him. Much as I would have liked to carry on the interrogation I had to put an end to it because time was wasting. I said, ‘Now, Johnny; I don’t want you to make any sudden moves because I’m a very nervous man, so just keep quite still.’

  I came up on his blind side, lifted the butt of the rifle and brought it down on the back of his head. It was no way to treat such a good gun but it was the only thing I had handy. The gun butt was considerably harder than the cosh and I regretfully decided I had fractured his skull. Anyway, he wouldn’t be causing me any more trouble.

  I walked over to pick up the jacket he had been using as a gun rest. It was heavy and I expected to find a pistol in the pocket, but the weight was caused by an unbroken box of rounds for the rifle. Next to the jacket was an open box. Both were unlabelled.

  I checked the rifle. The magazine was designed to hold five rounds and contained four, there was one in the breech ready to pop off, and there were nineteen rounds in the opened box. Mr Smith was a professional; he had filled the magazine, jacked one into the breech, and then taken out the magazine and stuffed another round into it so he would have six rounds in hand instead of five. Not that he needed them—he had bust the tyre on a moving vehicle at over four hundred yards with just one shot.

  He was a professional all right, but his name wasn’t Smith because he carried an American passport in the name of Wendell George Fleet. He also carried a pass that would get him into the more remote corners of Keflavik Naval Base, the parts which the public are discouraged from visiting. He didn’t carry a pistol; a rifleman as good as he usually despises handguns.

  I put the boxes of ammunition into my pocket where they weighed heavy, and I stuck Joe’s automatic pistol into the waistband of my trousers, unloading it first so I didn’t do a Kennikin on myself. Safety catches are not all that reliable and a lot of men have ruined themselves for their wives by acting like a character in a TV drama.

  I went to see how Joe was doing and found that he was still asleep and that his name wasn’t even Joe according to his passport. It turned out he was Patrick Aloysius McCarthy. I regarded him speculatively; he looked more Italian than Irish to me. Probably all the names were phoney, just as Buchner who wasn’t Graham turned out to be Philips.

  McCarthy carried two spare magazines for the Smith & Wesson, both of them full, which I confiscated. I seemed to be building up quite an armoury on this expedition—from a little knife to a high-powered rifle in one week wasn’t doing too bad. Next up the scale ought to be a burp gun or possibly a fully-fledged machine-gun. I wondered how long it would take me to graduate to something really lethal, such as an Atlas ICBM.

  McCarthy had been going somewhere when I thumped him. He had been trying to contact
someone by radio, but the walkie-talkie had been on the blink so he’d decided to walk, and that put whoever it was not very far away. I stared up towards the top of the ridge and decided to take a look over the next rise. It was a climb of perhaps two hundred yards and when I poked my head carefully over the top I caught my breath in surprise.

  The yellow US Navy helicopter was parked about four hundred yards away and two crewmen and a civilian sat in front of it, talking casually. I lifted Fleet’s rifle and looked at them through the big scope at maximum magnification. The crewmen were unimportant but I thought I might know the civilian. I didn’t, but I memorized his face for future reference.

  For a moment I was tempted to tickle them up with the rifle but I shelved the idea. It would be better to depart quietly and without fuss. I didn’t want that chopper with me the rest of the way, so I withdrew and went back down the hill. I had been away quite a while and Elin would be becoming even more worried, if that were possible.

  From where I was I had a good view along the track so I looked to see if Kennikin was yet in sight. He was! Through the scope I saw a minute black dot in the far distance crawling along the track, and I estimated that the jeep was about three miles away. There was a lot of mud along there and I didn’t think he’d be making much more than ten miles an hour, so that put him about fifteen minutes behind.

  I went down the hillside fast.

  Elin was squashed into the crack in the rock but she came out when I called. She ran over and grabbed me as though she wanted to check whether I was all in one piece and she was laughing and crying at the same time. I disentangled myself from her arms. ‘Kennikin’s not far behind; let’s move.’

  I set out towards the Land-Rover at a dead run, holding Elin’s arm, but she dragged free. ‘The coffee pot!’

  ‘The hell with it!’ Women are funny creatures; this was not a time to be thinking of domestic economy. I grabbed her arm again and dragged her along.

  Thirty seconds later I had the engine going and we were bouncing along the track too fast for either safety or comfort while I decided which potholes it would be safe to put the front wheels into. Decisions, decisions, nothing but bloody decisions—and if I decided wrongly we’d have a broken half-axle or be stuck in the mud and the jig would be up.

  We bounced like hell all the way to the Tungnaá River and the traffic got thicker—one car passed us going the other way, the first we had seen since being in the Óbyggdir. That was bad because Kennikin was likely to stop it and ask the driver if he had seen a long wheelbase Land-Rover lately. It was one thing to chase me through the wilderness without knowing where I was, and quite another to know that I was actually within spitting distance. The psychological spur would stimulate his adrenal gland just that much more.

  On the other hand, seeing the car cheered me because it meant that the car transporter over the Tungnaá would be on our side of the river and there would be no waiting. I have travelled a lot in places where water crossings are done by ferry—there are quite a few in Scotland—and it’s a law of nature that the ferry is always on the other side when you arrive at the water’s edge. But that wouldn’t be so this time.

  Not that this was a ferry. You cross the Tungnaá by means of a contraption—a platform slung on an overhead cable. You drive your car on to the platform and winch yourself across, averting your eyes from the white water streaming below. According to the Ferdahandbokin, which every trav-eller in the Óbyggdir ought to consult, extreme care is necessary for people not acquainted with the system. Personally, I don’t recommend it for those with queasy stomachs who have to cross in a high wind.

  We arrived at the Tungnaá and the contraption was, indeed, on our side. I checked that it was secured and safe, and then drove on carefully. ‘Stay in the cab,’ I said to Elin. ‘You can’t winch with that broken wing.’

  I got out and began to operate the winch, keeping an eye open for Kennikin’s imminent arrival. I felt very exposed and naked and I hoped I had kept my fifteen-minute lead because crossing the Tungnaá is a slow job. But we made it without incident and I drove off the platform with a great sense of relief.

  ‘Now we can stop the bastard,’ I said as we drove away.

  Elin sat up straight. ‘You’re not going to break the cable!’ There was a note of indignation in her voice. Being shot at was all right but the wanton destruction of public property was unethical.

  I grinned at her. ‘I’d do it if I could, but it would take a stronger man than me.’ I pulled the car off the road and looked back; the river was out of sight. ‘No, I’m going to chain up the platform so Kennikin can’t pull it across. He’ll be stuck on the other side until someone going the other way can release it, and God knows when that will be—there’s not much traffic. Stay here.’

  I got out, rummaged in the tool kit, and found the snow chains. It wasn’t at all likely we’d need them in the summer and they could do a better job keeping Kennikin off my neck than lying where they were. I lifted them out and ran back down the track.

  You can’t really tie a chain into a knot but I tethered that platform with such a tangle of iron that would take anyone at least half an hour to free unless he happened to have an oxy-acetylene cutting torch handy. I had nearly completed the job when Kennikin arrived on the other side and the fun started.

  The jeep came to a halt and four men got out, Kennikin in the lead. I was hidden behind the platform and no one saw me at first. Kennikin studied the cable and then read the instructions that are posted in Icelandic and English. He got the hang of it and ordered his men to haul the platform back across the river.

  They duly hauled and nothing happened.

  I was working like hell to finish the job and just got it done in time. The platform lurched away and then stopped, tethered by the chain. There was a shout from the other side and someone went running along the bank so as to get into a position to see what was stopping the platform. He saw it all right—he saw me. The next moment he had whipped out a gun and started to shoot.

  The pistol is a much over-rated weapon. It has its place, which is about ten yards from its target or, better still, ten feet. The popgun that was shooting at me was a short-barrelled .38 revolver—a belly gun—with which I wouldn’t trust to hit anything I couldn’t reach out and touch. I was pretty safe as long as he aimed at me; if he started to shoot anywhere else I might get hit by accident, but that was a slim chance.

  The others opened up as I snagged the last bit of chain into place. A bullet raised the dust two yards away and that was as close as they came. Yet it’s no fun being shot at so I turned and belted away up the track at a dead run.

  Elin was standing by the Land-Rover, her face full of concern, having heard the barrage of shots. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘The war hasn’t broken out.’ I reached inside and took out Fleet’s rifle. ‘Let’s see if we can discourage them.’

  She looked at the rifle with abhorrence. ‘Oh, God! Must you kill them? Haven’t you done enough?’

  I stared at her and then the penny dropped. She thought I’d got hold of that rifle by killing Fleet; she seemed to think that you couldn’t take that much gun away from a man without killing him. I said, ‘Elin; those men across the river were trying to kill me. The fact they didn’t succeed doesn’t alter their intention. Now, I’m not going to kill anyone—I said I’ll discourage them.’ I held up the rifle. ‘And I didn’t kill the man I took this from, either.’

  I walked away down the track but veered away from it before I reached the river. I hunted around until I found suitable cover and then lay and watched Kennikin and his crew unsuccessfully trying to get at the platform. A 30-power scope was a bit too much optical glass for a range of a hundred yards but it had variable power so I dropped it to a magnification of six which was as low as it would go. A rock in front of me formed a convenient rest and I settled the butt against my shoulder and looked into the eyepiece.

  I wasn’t going to kill anyone. Not that I didn’t want to, but b
odies you can’t get rid of are inconvenient and lead to the asking of awkward questions by the appropriate authorities. A wounded Russian, on the other hand, would be eliminated just as much as a dead one. He would be smuggled by his friends on to the trawler which was undoubtedly to hand, probably already in Reykjavik harbour. The Russians have more non-fishing trawlers than any other nation on earth.

  No, I wasn’t going to kill anyone, but someone would soon wish to God he were dead.

  Kennikin had disappeared and the three other men were engaged in a heated discussion about how to solve their little problem. I broke it up by firing five spaced shots in thirty seconds. The first hit the man standing next to the jeep in the kneecap, and suddenly there wasn’t anyone else around to shoot at. He lay on the ground, writhing and shouting, and he’d have one leg shorter than the other for the rest of his life—if he was got into a hospital quickly. If not, he’d be lucky to have a leg at all.

  I re-sighted and squeezed the trigger again, this time shooting at the off-side front tyre of the jeep. The rifle was one of the best I’ve ever handled and, at a hundred yards, the trajectory was so flat that I could put a bullet exactly where I wanted it. The tyre wasn’t just punctured; under the close-range hammer blow of that big .375 bullet it exploded into bits, as did the other front tyre when I let fly again.

  Someone popped off with a pistol. I ignored that and fed another round into the breech. I centred the cross hairs on to the front of the radiator and fired again, and the jeep rocked on its springs under the impact. This rifle was chambered to shoot big game and anything that can crack open the frontal skull bone of a buffalo wouldn’t do an engine block much good. I put the last bullet in the same place in the hope of putting the jeep permanently out of action and then withdrew, keeping my head down.

  I walked up to the Land-Rover, and said to Elin, ‘It’s a good rifle.’