Aftershocks

by Mark Parragh

  Chapter 16

  Driving north out of Borgarnes, August put on some old pop music and tapped happily along on the Volvo’s steering wheel.

  “No more work for a while,” he said. “No more stops until Blönduós. We can make up some time.”

  Crane sat back and stretched. Datafall’s people were probably looking for him well to the south. If Georges and the pilots had followed his instructions, they’d be out of Icelandic airspace by now. He wasn’t home free yet by any means, but he could feel the distance between himself and his pursuers opening up. Things had gone off the rails back inside the complex, but he was close to recovering it and bringing the mission home.

  Coming out of Borgarnes, the road turned eastward, and the truck rolled through mostly flat, empty land that had been carved up into large fields separated by long, straight drainage ditches. Beyond them, Crane saw low, broken hills. In the dim light he could see the bare slopes rising to an undulating ridgeline. Nothing broke the smooth line of the hilltops as far as he could see. Beyond them he could make out a line of mountains. They looked equally bare.

  “Why aren’t there any trees in Iceland?” he asked August. “Not none, but… damn close. Is it the winters?”

  “No, no,” said August. “Trees will grow. The volcanoes play hell with them.” He waved his hand at the landscape. “That’s all old lava fields out there. Good farming. But mostly, people just cut them all down back in the old days. Now we’re trying to grow them again. The government pays you to grow trees on your land. We’ll get the forests back. It will take a while, though.”

  A sound was breaking through the music, Crane realized, meshing with the beat. It took him a moment to realize what it was. Rotor blades. It was not a good sound.

  Crane swept the landscape, but saw no lights, no sign of human habitation at all. If they made him, there was nowhere for him to hide. He considered trying to stash the data tap somewhere in August’s truck, but they’d search it.

  August heard the helicopter now. He was leaning forward, peering up around the edge of the truck’s roof, trying to see it. The sound grew louder, unmistakable.

  Then, with a roar, the helicopter swept over them, lights blinking. The rotor wash shook the truck. The helicopter slewed ahead of them, turning perpendicular to the road. Crane saw the side door open, revealing a dark interior.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Einar shouted over the roaring engine. The helicopter was no more than twenty feet above the roadway, sliding sideways in front of them. Crane could see movement inside.

  Einar slowed and steered toward the shoulder. “This guy’s a madman!”

  Suddenly Crane knew with a dreadful certainty what was about to happen. He released his seatbelt and slid down into the foot well, behind the metal front of the cab. He grabbed August’s arm.

  “Get down!”

  August looked at him like he was insane, fought him to keep his grip on the wheel. Then the gunner inside the helicopter opened up, and the cab exploded around them. Shattered glass rained down, and smoke filled the cab. August roared in confusion and shock, and Crane felt the truck veer to the left, felt the wheels rumble off the edge of the shoulder, heard the crackle of automatic fire and the bullets slamming into the truck’s bodywork.

  The truck veered sharply back across the pavement and leaned to one side. Crane felt it start to tip and braced himself against the door and the seat. He caught a glimpse of August and of blood sprayed across the back wall of the cab. Bullets were still slapping into the top of the truck. Then they were rolling. Crane fell on top of August, and the noise of the helicopter engine, even the gunshots, were drowned out by the shriek of metal.

  When it stopped, Crane was jammed up against the steering wheel and the dashboard. He was lying on top of August. The dashboard lights were still on, and Crane could just make out August’s face, his blank, staring eyes. There was nothing he could do for him.

  The shooting had stopped, but he still heard the clatter of the helicopter. He kicked out the safety glass at the bottom of the spider-webbed windshield, making a hole he could crawl through.

  “I’m sorry, August,” he said. Then he grabbed his pack by one of the straps and pushed his way out onto the cold pavement.

  Crane crawled around the wrecked cab until the bulk of the truck shielded him from view, then peered back around a torn fender panel. The helicopter had landed on the road perhaps fifty yards away. The engine was still idling, the blades spinning. It was ready to lift off again on short notice.

  Then a figure jumped down from the side door and strode toward the wreck. It was a tall blond man, wearing a tuxedo of all things, and carrying a light machine gun. That was the man who had killed August. Crane studied the cruel features, burning that face into his memory.

  As the man with the gun came closer, Crane looked around desperately for some plan of action. The land was flat all around. There was no cover except a deep drainage ditch along the side of the highway. Crane had been seeing them for a while. They ran along the road and between fields, a network of them, like the Icelandic version of barbed wire fences. If he could get to it unnoticed, he could follow it away from the highway.

  Crane searched through his pack for the plastic tube with its one remaining foil pouch, then he pulled the pack’s straps over his shoulders and got ready to run. He discarded the tube and held the pouch in one hand. The smell of diesel fuel was strong. The Volvo’s tanks had ruptured when it rolled, and there was vapor in the air. It would do. Crane tore the pouch open and slapped the doughy, white ball against the nearer tank. He heard the sizzle of water boiling away from the metal, heard the tank creak as it rapidly heated.

  He ran straight down the road, away from the truck, keeping it between himself and the man with the machine gun. Then behind him, the truck went up in a loud fireball, and Crane instantly sprinted for the roadside, counting on the flash and the explosion to hide him. He dove into the ditch like he was going into a swimming pool.

  He hit the dirt hard and tumbled into cold mud at the bottom. He could hear shouting on the roadway above. Crane ignored it. The only thing he could do now was get as far away as possible and figure out what to do next.

  The ditch was maybe six feet deep. He crawled on his hands and knees through the cold, grasping muck at the bottom until he reached another ditch. This one cut off at a right angle, leading away from the road and back into the fields.

  Crane followed it. He had no idea where he was going. That would come later. He thought of poor August, whose only crime was picking up a lost hiker. He remembered the face of the man in the tuxedo.

  A lot of things would come later.

  Chapter 17

  It was twenty minutes before the volunteer fire department from Bifrost showed up. Einar and his men had gotten the fire under control and combed through the burnt-out wreckage of the truck. It was a dirty and unpleasant task. Einar’s throat burned from the thick diesel smoke. His tuxedo was a lost cause. And all just to find the body of a short, doughy man who was obviously the driver. Of the passenger who’d caused so much trouble, there wasn’t a trace. They’d searched the area to make sure he hadn’t been thrown clear. They’d poked through the charred ruins of the cab for some sign of the device he’d taken. They’d found nothing.

  Now Einar had a squad of hurriedly dressed first responders with extinguishers and rescue equipment to deal with.

  The first volunteer to reach the scene piled out of a sedate looking family sedan and rushed toward him.

  “Is anyone hurt?” he shouted.

  “The driver!” Einar shouted back. “He went very quickly. There was nothing we could do for him.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Einar. “We saw it burst into flame, and so we landed to see if we could help. But…” he pointed back to the smoking wreck with a gesture of resignation.

  “What are you doing out here?” the man asked in confusion.

  Einar was alr
eady retreating toward his helicopter. The device wasn’t here. The intruder had survived and gotten away with it. That was the only way it could have happened. That meant he’d done all he could do here. Any more delay was just giving his target more of a head start.

  “Geodetic survey!” he shouted and gestured toward the helicopter. “Interior ministry.”

  The man looked confused but didn’t question it. He didn’t seem to know what to think. More firefighters were arriving now, putting out the rest of the scattered fires, the small pools of burning fuel in the road. A bright red pickup with foam tanks in the back pulled up, and men began uncoiling hoses.

  Einar waved his men back toward the helicopter.

  “Wait,” said the volunteer fireman. He followed Einar back toward the helicopter until he decided the whirling blades were too close for comfort. “We called the police station in Borgarnes! They’ll want to talk to you.”

  Einar pointed to the gray sky growing brighter as the sun rose again. He let it vaguely suggest people rising, heading for work. “Have to clear the highway!” he shouted. “Have them contact the ministry!”

  “Geodetic survey?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  Then Einar leapt back aboard the helicopter, and it immediately lifted off into the gray morning. Einar looked down as the ground receded. A cluster of confused firemen looked back up at the helicopter, no doubt wondering why the interior ministry would have sent a man in a tuxedo out in a helicopter to do mapping work by night.

  Smoke still rose from the charred wreck of the truck. The volunteers were spraying the engine compartment with foam. The fire had been intense. Along with the damage from the wreck, Einar hoped the explosion and fire would conceal the damage from gunfire. Datafall’s executive board was composed of very powerful people. They would be able to make all this go away. But the idea was to kill the intruder and recover or destroy the stolen data. They wouldn’t appreciate having to cover up such a public action that didn’t even get them what they wanted.

  Einar looked across the broken ground below, at the deep green and brown shades of grass. He was waiting for the pilot to ask where they were going. At the moment, Einar had no idea. He glanced back one last time at the blackened mass of the truck and the tendril of smoke spiraling up from it. What a damn waste. Nothing was going his way.

  Then, as expected, the pilot’s voice crackled over Einar’s headset. “Orders, sir?”

  Einar glanced at his map. The Ring Road ran more or less north-northeast here. Out here, there wasn’t much in either direction to draw the man. But to the west was nothing but a couple lakes and empty lowlands. To the east were a scattering of remote farms. At least there, he’d find cars he might steal. And there were drainage ditches separating the fields. That had to be how he’d slipped away. Now the day was growing light again, and there was precious little cover for a man on foot.

  “We’ll search east of the road. Pull everyone out of Reykjavik. Anybody south of us comes up here. I want as many eyes on the ground as we can get.”

  The man was resourceful, Einar had to admit. Better, he was damned lucky. But that would only take him so far. One man, on foot, out here, against barren ground with nowhere to hide. Luck couldn’t help him now.

  Einar broke out a pair of binoculars as the helicopter swung east of the Ring Road and settled into a comfortable altitude for searching the ground. They’d have him soon, he thought.

  He tapped the headset button to speak to the pilot. “And have somebody bring me a god damn duty uniform!”

  Chapter 18

  Crane ran. He’d traveled more than a mile in the network of ditches before deciding it was safe to climb out. He was cold and wet from the muck and bruised from the wreck. He was hungry, and he hadn’t slept. But Crane had been prepared for situations like this. The Hurricane Group had put him through military SERE training—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—in eastern Washington in the winter. By comparison, he told himself, this should be a piece of cake.

  On the other hand, the woods of eastern Washington were thick with cover. Concealment was easy there. Here, there was nothing.

  Crane could hear the distant sound of the helicopter. It was searching methodically, back and forth across a defined search area. They’d missed their guess about which direction he was heading, and had done an even worse job of projecting how far he’d made it since leaving the road. They were well behind him at the moment. But when they didn’t find him, they’d move farther out. Eventually they’d spot him.

  But he knew they would face difficulties of their own. At some point, they’d have to refuel. Crane’s map showed several small airstrips scattered around this part of the country, but those probably consisted of little more than a packed dirt runway and a shed or two. Supplies of aviation fuel would likely be limited out here. They might even have to fly back to Reykjavik to refuel. And of course, the farther they had to go, the more fuel they would burn getting back out here, the sooner they would have to leave again, and the less time they could search for him.

  So Crane ran. The steep hills he’d seen from the truck rose up in front of him, tilting up into bare, brown slopes that ultimately vanished into a bank of low cloud. He kept up his pace until the sound of rotors faded away. After another five minutes of silence, Crane slowed to a walk, then sat down and let his body rest.

  The land around him was barren. There was little wind today. With the helicopter gone, he was surrounded by a great silence. Nothing moved. The land was beautiful in its desolate way, but uninviting. People living in a land like this would be a stern people, he thought, used to living close to the margins of starvation. They would be accustomed to death, to heroic efforts that still failed because the land gave nothing back. They would celebrate heartily when they could, because they knew what tomorrow might bring. And there would be a grim humor that they didn’t reveal often. Looking at the country explained a lot about the Icelanders he had met.

  Crane took a GPS receiver, a map, and a compass from a side pocket of his emergency pack and worked out his position. He’d put another couple miles between himself and the Ring Road. The high ridge in front of him ran north-south for several miles. He was near its northern end. The southern end was farther than he cared to hike on foot. That meant he had to go around it to the north, or else over it. His instincts warned him away from the northern course. The Ring Road curved around the end of the ridge and headed on toward Blönduós, the next town. Going around the ridge would force him close to the highway, making it more likely someone would see him. Locals might take him for just another hiker—his emergency pack was planned to help him pass as a backpacking tourist—but Datafall might have concocted some story to put the police on his trail.

  According to his map, the land sloped down into a valley on the far side of the ridge. It was perhaps five miles wide, drained by a small river. Across the river, another range of barren hills ran parallel to this one. A road ran along the near side of the river, and the map showed several farmsteads. These were considerably more isolated than those out by the Ring Road. Datafall would be less likely to look for him there. The remote farms might offer a chance to find some supplies and get his hands on a car.

  He looked up at the mist-shrouded hills. Near the cloud line, even the grasses faded out, and the hillside was bare dirt and scree. It wasn’t very welcoming, and he didn’t like the idea of a climb. But there it was.

  Crane took a granola bar from his pack—leaving him one more—and ate it as he walked on toward the hills. The land grew rockier and his progress slowed as he made his way up the slope. He was painfully aware of how exposed he was here. He angled south, following a less steep path up the ridge. As he gained altitude, he could see more of the countryside he’d passed through. Behind him to the west, the land stretched away in a patchwork of uncultivated fields with the Ring Road a dark line slicing through it. Eventually the fields gave way to a pair of large lakes with a spit of lowland
between them, and finally the dark sea. The colors were muted by the low sun filtering through the overcast.

  Crane was focused on keeping his pace steady, paying attention to his breathing and his heart rate. The idea was to exert himself just enough, find the sweet spot that would give him the fastest pace without wearing himself out. So it took him a few seconds to notice the sound of the helicopter. It was closer now. They’d refueled more quickly than he’d hoped. And they were moving farther from the road this time.

  He glanced over and saw it, a dark spot moving against the cloud cover. If they hadn’t seen him yet, it was just a matter of time. He looked around for someplace to hide but saw only a few scattered rocks. There was only one place he could hope to stay out of sight.

  Crane abandoned his careful pace. He turned directly upslope and pushed himself higher, faster, running up the steepest part of the slope. Before long he could feel the burn of lactic acid in his muscles, felt his heart pumping. But he could also hear the clatter of the helicopter searching for him, growing louder until it seemed to thunder in his ears. You’re imagining that, he told himself angrily. They haven’t seen you. Keep moving.

  The fog would conceal him. It offered at least temporary safety, but it seemed to taunt him, always just a few more steps away. Crane kept moving, breathing, climbing as fast as his body would carry him.

  When he was sure he was above the cloud line, he stopped and crouched low to the ground. He was right. The green land below him was dim and misty now. Above him was just diffuse gray light and the top of the ridgeline. The helicopter even seemed more distant now, working its way up and down the fields below, searching in vain. Crane resisted the urge to stop here, but he settled down to a recovery pace, letting the mist protect him as he headed south along the ridge.