Zaragosa was beginning to close down for the siesta period when we drove out of it. We wound our way through narrow streets to the Puente del Piedra spanning the Ebro River, and then took Highway 240 northeast toward Huesca.
Gradually the nature of the countryside changed. The snow-capped Pyrenees appeared dimly in the distance. We began to climb in earnest, and I kept our speed down so the burdened Opel wouldn’t overheat.
Beyond Huesca the road became hilly and winding and showed signs of neglect. We drove through five short tunnels in ten miles and negotiated climbing, hairpin turns. Purple gorges and sparkling waterfalls abounded.
An hour before mountain sunset, we reached a roadside village looking down upon an emerald blue lake. I stopped and checked the map. We were seven miles and a thousand feet below the border outpost from which Karl Erikson and Walter Croswell would be vanned tomorrow.
I circled back south of town and parked the Opel off the roadway. Hazel helped me stake down the tent. We changed to heavier clothing to minimize the effect of a cold mist which was forming at the crest of the hill and moving downward toward us.
“I’m glad we’re ready to get started,” Hazel said, as she deftly stirred the contents of four cans into a soup pot over the campfire to make a heartening slumgullion.
“Yes,” I replied.
But if my tone was less hearty than hers, there was a reason.
From looking at the map and studying the situation, I was sure that Karl Erikson had made his move from somewhere in the near vicinity.
Erikson was a shrewd, powerful, painstaking man, but he had made his move and failed.
And I didn’t know why.
• • •
We got off to a flying start in the morning.
I woke to find my sleeping bag unzipped and a bare-assed Hazel crawling in with me. “I’ve never done it in Spain,” she stated. “For that matter, I’ve never done it in a sleeping bag.”
She managed matters so well that I was hard before I was fully awake. It wasn’t as good as Hemingway makes it sound, but it wasn’t all that bad either. “Way—to—go, Horseman,” Hazel murmured in my ear as I jackhammered her encompassing flesh. “Way—to—go!”
We relaxed in the sleeping bag after our burst of energy. “That was a real ring-a-ding-ding session,” my redhead sighed. “I’ve always heard it was better at higher altitudes.”
It hadn’t been that good for me, but when it is for the woman, that’s seven innings of the ball game. I reached out an exploratory foot from the unzipped bag and pushed the tent flap open. Pale sunlight had dispersed the worst of the previous night’s misty fog. I had a quick cup of coffee while Hazel curled up in the sack again. There was no need for last minute instructions; I’d covered as many contingencies as I could think of while we were driving up.
I woke her when I was ready to leave. She clamped her arms around my neck and gave me a goodbye kiss. I backed out of the tent and the flap dropped behind me. I went to the Opel and took out the canvas shoulder bag I’d crammed with tinned and dried rations the night before. I’d packed enough to last for three days. Julio had said the prisoner transfer was to take place today, but with the unpredictability of Spanish schedules I wanted to be prepared.
I checked myself before I took off: gun, box of ammo, matches, knife, can opener, full canteen, six-power binoculars. With the essential gear draped from both shoulders, I still had my hands free.
I looked down at the gravel road which stretched for a quarter mile in each direction before it was cut off by curves. I could hear nothing but the rustling of pines and the chirping of birds in the after-dawn breeze. In the solitude of the mountains sounds carry clearly and over long distances. It was one of the problems.
I eased myself down the steep dirt bank into the roadbed, checking my progress with my heels. Then I walked uphill toward the nearest crest. My map wasn’t detailed enough to show each bend and twist in the road, and I needed a good spot to set an ambush.
I wanted a place that would give me a view of the road for at least a mile ahead. I knew what I’d be watching for: a boxlike vehicle with its body mounted behind a regular truck cab; double axle drive with dual wheels at the rear; wire screen mesh covering the single small window high in the side of the sheet-metal body. The van had only one purpose, the transportation of prisoners, and it wasn’t going to be hard to recognize it I was expecting trouble. I didn’t know what kind, but trouble. Erikson had gone this route, and hadn’t made it. The resistance he’d run into must have been a good bit more than he expected. And since a hijack attempt had been made once, it figured that extra security measures had been laid on.
I found an intercept point along a relatively straight stretch of road between two sharp curves. The prisoner van would not be proceeding at speed. As the crow flies it was no more than 1000 yards from where Hazel was waiting with the Opel beyond a lower hairpin turn.
I staked myself out in bushes on the bank above the road, and waited. Only three cars and one truck passed in the first hour. The rising sun removed the chilliness from the air. Twice I had to jerk myself awake after nearly falling asleep.
I debated zapping the driver through the windshield, but finally decided against it because a dead man might let the van veer off the road into the deep ravine. I wondered again how Karl had tried to do it and where he went wrong. I finally stopped thinking about how Erikson had erred. In essence, the job was a simple, one-man hijacking. It meant stopping the van, overcoming any resistance, immobilizing the guards, and preventing communication. I unslung my binoculars, studied the terrain again, and satisfied myself that I was in a position that provided for those four major objectives.
Then I settled back to wait some more.
The sun rose higher, and the heat increased. I drank sparingly from my canteen. The occasional cars which passed all climbed the curving road from the lowlands below. Nothing appeared from the direction in which I was expecting the van.
It was mid-morning before I heard the unmistakable sound of a truck transmission in intermediate gear. The motor’s growl was from the correct direction, and I picked up the binoculars hurriedly. Three curves away I picked up the boxlike structure of the van slowly creeping around a bend. There were two men in the front seat of the van, obviously driver and guard. It would be a surprise if there weren’t more guards inside the van’s body with the prisoners.
I slithered down from my hillside vantage point to the shoulder of the road. I felt loose. I dropped into the ditch with arms thrust forward and resting on the road shoulder. In my hands in a firm double grip was the Luger that Sam Morgan had acquired for me.
The truck rounded the curve into the straightaway, moving even more slowly than I had expected. I sighted on the right front tire so any pull of the van would be into the bank away from me. It would be a short-range, acute-angle shot. When I squeezed the trigger, I saw the tire-tread peel open and the front wheel shimmy simultaneously with the firing recoil. I was on my feet and alongside the driver’s side of the cab before he succeeded in wrestling the van to a bumpy halt.
I whipped his door open and dragged him out of the cab. He was unarmed, and I shoved him sprawling into the ditch. I had the Luger muzzle trained on the cab’s second occupant, a young, arrogant-looking guard in a neat-fitting dark green uniform with polished, black leather crossbelts over his tunic. On his feet were calf-high jump boots. On his face was an expression of frustrated disbelief.
A carbine was in a sling on the inside of the truck door, and I grabbed it before I forced the guard to step down. He had a handgun in a holster on his hip, but the holster’s flap was buckled. He glared at me malevolently as I motioned him to the rear of the van. The driver was on his feet in the ditch, staring stolidly, and I included him in my arm-sweep. I could hear the increasing clamor of questioning voices within the body of the van.
I lined guard and driver up at the van’s rear, then prodded them with the butt of the carbine into a frisk position. The
y leaned ahead precariously, foreheads against the van body, feet spread wide apart, hands clasped behind their backs. There was going to be no quick movement from that awkward stance.
I took the guard’s handgun, then searched them both. Neither had another weapon. I made a twisting motion with my free hand to indicate I wanted the key to the lock on the truck’s rear doors. The guard spat at my feet angrily. He wasn’t quite stupid enough to spit at me directly.
I punched the butt of the carbine hard against his hands. The impact slammed his belly against the truck body, and he gave a stifled yelp as the flesh split on his knuckles and blood started to flow. He sagged to his knees in the dirt of the road, gasping and wringing his hands.
I gestured to the driver. No further example was necessary. The driver dropped down beside the green-uniformed guard and removed a large brass key from one of his pockets. I took the key and unlocked the truck’s doors. I flung one wide, staying behind it to use it as a shield. An older man, also in uniform, stood cringing, carbine held loosely, muzzle down. I reached inside before he saw me and snatched it away from his feeble grip, flinging it over the edge of the road. It whirled end over end and disappeared in the heavy brush far down the precipitous slope. I gave the first carbine an underhanded flip and sent it to join the second.
A wave of the Luger barrel was sign language enough to induce the older guard to climb down from the van’s prison box. His eyes darted nervously to the groveling figure of his companion who was still on his knees. The older man sat down on his heels in the roadway, not an ounce of opposition in him.
The guard’s removal provoked an outpouring of prisoners from the van. They dropped down into the road like ants. At least a dozen hit the dirt. Walter Croswell was the third or fourth one out. Even in dirty khakis he looked pure Ivy League.
I was watching for Erikson. He was the last to climb down, and he did it carefully, moving as though he were fragile. His right arm was done up in a sling made from a black bandanna, and he was supporting the arm with his left hand.
He stopped dead when he saw me. “You!” he said huskily. “How the hell did they ever get to you?”
“They have their ways,” I said drily.
Erikson surveyed the gabbling prisoners who were all talking at once and gesticulating at each other. Then his face darkened when he saw the arrogant-faced young guard whom I’d touched up with the carbine. With more of his usual vigor, Karl strode over to him and kicked him sharply in the ribs. He recovered his balance from the energy expended, then kicked him again. It was so foreign to Erikson’s usual style that I could easily picture what must have taken place to provoke it.
“Get the prisoners moving, Karl,” I said. “We want them scattered through the hills so the roundup effort will be diluted, and so no special importance can be attached to the fact that you and the kid are missing.”
Erikson spoke half a dozen sentences. The ragtag group was moving even before he finished. Walter Croswell was standing beside the van, looking at me curiously when he heard me speaking English. With him was another prisoner. It took me a second look to recognize that it was a girl, despite the fact she had long, straight black hair that fell to her shoulders.
Her hair was confined by a beaded band around her forehead. A fringed leather vest was accentuated by a three-strand necklace of metal and glass beads. A tight-fitting tee shirt, punched out by the nipples of well-developed breasts, was a fine advertisement for the braless look.
“Get rid of the hippie,” I said to young Croswell in the first words I’d spoken to him.
“She’s with me,” he answered. He sounded like Joe College. His tone was cool and patricianlike.
“She was with you,” I emphasized. “Get rid of her.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” he snapped. “My father sent you, didn’t he?”
The arrogance of money, I thought to myself, but it was no time for a debate. We’d been lucky already that nothing had come along the road. I’d take care of the girl myself later. “Let’s move it,” I said to Erikson. “Hazel’s waiting down the road with a station wagon.”
I let the air out of the rest of the truck tires before I joined the others. The driver and the two guards sat huddled at the side of the road. There was no haughtiness in the face of the young one now, just simple fear.
Erikson was moving so slowly when I caught up to him that I sensed a real problem. He stumbled constantly, seemingly unable to put his feet down evenly. His condition was such that I could envision a major complication in the escape effort.
Young Croswell walked along in front of us with his companion. His stride was buoyant, but he stopped several times to let Erikson catch up. I still didn’t like the tagalong aspect of the slim, sad-faced girl. The last thing I needed in addition to the wounded Erikson was an unpredictable female vein-shooter.
“We can make a shortcut ascent over the next ridge to Hazel,” I said encouragingly to Erikson.
I was bringing up the rear of the procession, watching the roadsides and rock overhangs, Luger in hand.
None of the other escaped prisoners was anywhere in sight.
Despite the short distance he’d traveled, Erikson’s face was gray with pain. I changed my mind about leaving the road despite the risk involved in staying on it. “Can’t count on me for much, Earl,” he muttered when he saw me covertly watching him. “All three bones broken in the arm. Might have a couple broken ribs, too. I didn’t get much medical attention because I wasn’t doing enough talking to satisfy the border police.” He smiled tiredly. “Just a bad roll of the dice.”
“What about the guard you planted your boot into?”
“He gave me a lot of attention, none of it good.” Erikson hunched his shoulders as though to gather his strength while we began the climb to the last high point between us and Hazel. “I should have taken lessons from you about a truck hijack,” he went on. “I stopped them all right by stepping out into the road to flag them down. I held a gun on the guard, but the driver started up the van again suddenly and ran into me. Slammed me into a tree.”
“When are you going to learn you can’t be nice to people, Karl?” He shrugged. “What’s with the girl with young Croswell?”
“They were together at the border when he was picked up for possession. She’s an odd type. Very quiet. The boy has all the snootiness you’d expect from heavy money. Feels he has to live up to his image as an athlete and playboy. He got plenty of headlines back home for both.”
The subjects of the discussion were twenty yards ahead of us. The girl had a perspiration-stained knapsack on her back. They had paused at the crest of the hill and were staring down into the valley beyond. When we joined them, one look was enough to see why.
I’d left the Opel with an eye toward a fast getaway rather than total concealment, and the motley crew of escaping prisoners had found it. Jubilant shouts drifted to us faintly as Hazel was shoved roughly out of the way. I stood there helplessly. The action was taking place far beyond pistol range.
The prisoners swarmed over the station wagon, pitching out the extra equipment I hadn’t unloaded. With room made for themselves, they scrambled aboard hurriedly. The Opel lurched from the brush in which I’d left it onto the road and disappeared over the humpbacked arc of the next hill.
“Jesus, I really blew that one!” I exclaimed. “Why the hell I didn’t realize—”
“Look!” Walter Croswell interrupted. He was standing with his arm around the girl’s waist.
A dark object penetrated the low dust cloud hanging over the brow of the hill beyond which the station wagon had disappeared. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I recognized the Opel again. It had reversed direction and was speeding toward us, swaying from side to side with its prisoner-laden weight and coming dangerously close to the precipitous drop at the side of the road.
The reversal carried its own instant explanation: right behind the Opel was a mustard-colored Jeep. The Opel’s rear end slithered wildly,
almost uncontrollably at that speed. The more stable Jeep gained rapidly.
The hippie girl exclaimed aloud as the Jeep drew up alongside the station wagon on the narrow road, crowding it perilously close to the sheer drop-off. Erikson muttered something as the Jeep pulled into the Opel, deliberately bumping it. The station wagon swerved, but recovered.
The Jeep bumped it again, and the Opel’s right rear wheel dropped over the rim of the road. Almost in slow motion it tipped upward slowly until it was on its side. It slid to a stop partway over the abyss. I could hear the screams of panicked prisoners desperately bailing out of the upended Opel. Men were still flinging themselves from it onto the roadway when it overbalanced.
“Ohhh-h-h!” the hippie girl exclaimed as the Opel began to slide down the mountainside. It bounced from ledge to ledge. I couldn’t tell if anyone was left in it. A burst of flame appeared at the rear, and then the station wagon vanished from view although we could still hear its metal-crunching descent.
The Jeep had braked to a skidding stop, and uniformed men jumped out, pursuing the wildly scattering prisoners. The sight of the uniforms brought me back to my senses. “Into the brush before we’re seen!” I ordered. Walter Croswell turned around and looked at me. “Into the brush!”
He gave me a sullen look, but he took the girl’s arm and led her off the road. Erikson’s breath hissed sharply as I aided him into the concealing scrub oak and stately pines. The uneven ground sent him staggering despite my hand on his good arm. There was sweat on his forehead when we settled ourselves on our bellies behind brush that still afforded us a view of the action below.
One by one scruffy-looking prisoners were being frog-marched to the Jeep by pairs of uniformed men. I counted six who were rounded up. Erikson was seated with his back against a tree, his eyes closed. I worked my way over to him to check on his condition. “Do you think you can—” I started to say, when Walter Croswell interrupted me again.
Operation Stranglehold Page 6