Sneakernet

by Mark Parragh

  Crane sipped his tea. “What’s her story?”

  “She lives on her father’s old farm back in the hills,” said Mori. “With that horse and some sheep. She’s half wild. Always has been. I used to joke her mother went out walking one night and met an elf on the trail, and that’s where she came from.”

  Crane grinned. “You and her…” he said with a conspiratorial tone.

  Mori waved him off. “Bah. The times I asked her to marry me. But she never would. When she has to go to town, she comes for the truck. And sometimes, when the winds are harsh…”

  Crane heard Halla stomping back up the porch steps. He nodded to Mori. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Mori nodded thanks, and Crane got up, picked up the pack and the Sako. The door opened and Halla’s eyes widened when she saw Crane with the gun. But then he handed her the rifle and shrugged his pack over one shoulder.

  “We need to move,” he said. “Mori, thank you for the tea. It’s just what I needed.”

  Mori watched them from the door as they climbed into the ancient Land Rover and rattled off down the drive. Crane still saw him, a silhouette in the doorway, as they turned onto the main road and headed north.

  Chapter 20

  Georges found the woman running a shoestring charter operation at the far edge of the private aviation area. She spoke no English, and Georges certainly spoke no Norwegian. But she had a smattering of French, and so Georges was able to convey the idea that he needed to get to Grimsey immediately. In turn, she managed to get across that her name was Marit, and that she had a twin-engine Baron G58 that wasn’t doing anything to help pay for itself for the foreseeable future.

  In the end, money proved the universal language. Georges suspected he had hugely overpaid, even for a zero-notice international charter. But that was what Josh’s ridiculous wealth was for.

  They flew west into a sun that never truly set, over the dark void of the sea below. Georges sat up front, alongside Marit, with his bag of tricks in his lap. He had assembled what seemed useful from the things he’d brought to Iceland: a tricked out laptop, a couple programmable radio transceivers, a smartphone that he’d jailbroken and tweaked with some custom apps, a pocket tool kit. At the last moment, he’d added an old Gerber Mark I boot knife he’d found in a toolbox aboard the Gulfstream. He hoped he wouldn’t find a use for it.

  It was a long flight, with little to do besides stare out at the endless water and wonder if he’d made a terrible mistake. He knew nothing about Marit or her airplane. Perhaps she’d never flown over open water before. Perhaps she’d taken a job she was completely unqualified to do out of raw financial desperation. How would he know? He imagined them flying around the North Atlantic, searching in vain for Iceland until they ran out of fuel and simply vanished.

  But in truth, he knew it was what could be waiting on the ground that had him imagining vague terrors. He was the one rushing into danger that he wasn’t really prepared for. He had no idea what he would find in Akureyri. Perhaps nothing at all. It was possible that they’d long since found Crane. He could be lying dead in the highlands someplace right now, waiting for hikers to discover his bones in another twenty years.

  No, Georges told himself. He imagined the voice of a math teacher who had terrified him as a boy. He’s alive and he needs your help. You will find him and bring him out. Be a man. Go and do it now.

  “Islande,” Marit said suddenly. Iceland. She pointed off to the left, and Georges could just make out a dark line of land riding on the sea. Georges clutched his bag and smiled at her. She’d gotten him this far, at least.

  “Île Grimsey?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Une demi-heure.”

  Eventually the plane began to descend, and Georges saw the island ahead. Grimsey was a bare, windswept plateau of deep green grass and sheer gray cliffs in the middle of the ocean. Seeing it, he wasn’t surprised the Gulfstream couldn’t take him there. The island was tiny. The airstrip—3,400 feet long, the pilot had said—appeared to run almost the entire length of the western coast.

  Georges didn’t see a single tree. The whole island seemed bare. It was flat and tilted slightly so something dropped would roll west, cross the airstrip, and eventually end up in the sea. There was a lighthouse and a village of perhaps two dozen buildings at one end of the island. What kind of people chose to live in a place like this, he wondered. What the hell was he getting himself into?

  The Baron hit the runway and rolled down to taxi speed with plenty of room to spare. He was here. Marit taxied back to the “terminal” end of the airstrip, where there was a low, gray, nearly windowless building and a metal frame tower holding a pair of dish-shaped microwave antennas.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone to direct them, so Marit found a spot off to the side, where a pair of small planes were already tied down and covered in tarps, and slid in beside them.

  The wind off the sea was brisk as they climbed out of the plane. It whipped the sides of Georges’ jacket away from his body so he zipped it up and jammed his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t well prepared for the climate here, he thought. He wasn’t really prepared for any of this. He would have to improvise, the way Crane did. He took his bag from the cockpit and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Well, you’re here,” said Marit in her spotty French. She seemed dubious that anyone needed to get to a place like this with the urgency Georges had claimed.

  “I’ll take the ferry to the mainland and find my friend,” he answered. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. You’ll wait, right?”

  She looked around at the village and shrugged. “They must have a bar here someplace.”

  They walked toward the town together. A woman on a bicycle appeared as they reached the end of the main street. So the place wasn’t abandoned at least. A sudden thought struck Georges.

  “If my friend comes back alone, you’ll take him back to Stavanger, yes? His name is John Crane. He’s white, maybe 30, tall with dark hair.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, as if unsure she’d understood.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked eventually. “Are you in trouble?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be fine. Just… just if he comes back without me…”

  They found a restaurant with a bar toward the middle of one of the village’s two parallel streets and stopped out front. Marit looked at him, worried. “I can fly to Akureyri,” she said.

  “No,” Georges shook his head. “It’s better you stay here. We’ll be back.”

  She nodded. “Good luck,” she said. Then Georges hitched his bag up on his shoulder and headed off toward the small harbor and the ferry terminal.

  Chapter 21

  Halla drove along the narrow road by the river. The Land Rover rattled and squeaked. It was long past due for a suspension overhaul if nothing else, Crane thought. He sat in the cracked and scuffed passenger seat and watched the landscape roll by. They passed an occasional farm, but even those were sparse here.

  “How far to Blönduós?” he asked after a long silence.

  “Half an hour, maybe a little more,” said Halla. Then she fell silent again. Crane could see her grappling with uncomfortable thoughts.

  Half an hour to Blönduós and the police. He needed a solid plan before then. For all his claims of innocence, he really didn’t want to trust his fate to the Icelandic police. He was an outsider here. And he had in fact broken into Datafall’s facility, done a significant amount of damage, assaulted several people, and stolen their property. His side of the story wouldn’t look especially good to a police officer. If it even got that far. Crane had no idea what level of influence Datafall would have over a small town police department, but it was entirely possible that they’d place a couple calls up the chain of command and be told to hand Crane over to them.

  So letting Halla take him to the police wasn’t really an option. But that left the question of how he was going to stop her. He certainly wasn’t going to attack h
er. It might come to taking the Sako away from her and locking her up someplace. But of course that would just convince her that he was exactly the dangerous criminal that Datafall’s people were painting him as.

  He still didn’t have an answer he was happy with when he noticed Halla slowing. He looked up and realized the Land Rover was negotiating a curve at the top of a low rise. The road descended in a gentle sweep past a farm driveway and swept behind another low rise where the river curved in a lazy oxbow to the left. Beyond that, it intersected with another rural road, and at that intersection were two trucks. One was another of Datafall’s black Suburbans. The other was an aged Toyota 4Runner that obviously belonged to one of the local farmers. The Suburban was blocking the road, while the Toyota had pulled off and parked on the shoulder.

  Halla was braking, looking at the trucks with concern. Crane noted two black-clad figures in the road. At least one carried an automatic weapon.

  “Don’t stop,” he said. “You’re visible. Turn into the driveway.”

  “That’s Gunnar Steinsson’s truck,” she said. “What is going on here? It’s like an invasion.”

  She pulled into the driveway and drove toward the farmhouse.

  They were stopping and searching vehicles. It was a logical strategy, Crane thought. They’d lost track of him, so they threw up a net designed to contain him. Iceland’s limited road network made it the perfect place for it. There were only so many ways he could go.

  “What are we doing here?” Halla said as they pulled up in front of the farmhouse. There were no other vehicles around. It looked like nobody was home. Crane peered out the back windows, and decided they weren’t visible from the intersection here.

  “We’re deciding what to do,” said Crane. “They should have searched Gunnar’s truck and let him go when they saw I wasn’t in it.”

  Halla grinned. “Oh, Gunnar won’t have stood by for that.”

  Crane shook his head. “Well let’s hope he hasn’t gotten himself killed.”

  She looked at him in frank disbelief. “They wouldn’t.”

  “They already have, I told you. We need to find out if your friend’s okay, and help him. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded.

  “All right, they’ve seen the Land Rover. They were at Mori’s place so they’ve seen it before. They know it doesn’t belong here.”

  They could pull out and head back the way they came. That might make sense to the watchers on the road. Mori had come to see whoever lived here and was now going back home. But it got Crane no closer to escaping the country, and it didn’t help this Gunnar Steinsson. Crane didn’t know what he’d done to get himself in trouble with Datafall’s people, but now they’d effectively kidnapped a local. Crane had seen that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill an innocent if necessary to cover up other crimes.

  “Drive back out and head to the intersection. When we pass behind that embankment, I’m going to bail out. You drive up slow, you keep them busy. What are you doing here, who do you think you are—just keep them distracted. I’ll circle around behind them and see if I can find your friend.”

  “Or you could just run away and leave us to them,” she said.

  “No, I can’t. They’re out here because I stirred them up. They’re my mess. Now let’s go.”

  Crane tossed his pack into the back seat and slid down into the foot well.

  Halla considered him for a long moment. Then she put the Land Rover noisily into gear and threw it into a three-point turn.

  She drove out to the end of the driveway and stopped, as if looking for oncoming traffic. But she was looking down the slope to the pair of trucks. Crane could tell the men guarding the intersection had spotted them. In his mind he kept an image of the road down to the checkpoint at the intersection. He visualized the sweeping curve, the point where they’d be briefly invisible to the armed team, the route down into the river channel.

  “John Crane,” Halla said, her voice suddenly thick. He looked up and saw her turning to reach into the back seat. She came back holding the Sako and thrust it at him, stock first. “If you play me false, I swear to god…”

  Crane nodded and took the rifle. Then Halla pulled out and drove slowly down the hillside toward the waiting Datafall team.

  Chapter 22

  As they rolled around the curve, Halla hit the brake and slowed to a fast walk.

  “Now,” she hissed.

  Crane opened the door. As he swung out of the Land Rover, he looked back and met her eyes. He saw the fear in them, the hope she wasn’t making a mistake by trusting him. Then he hit the pavement, ran a few steps to keep his balance, and dashed for the side of the road. Behind him, the door swung shut again, and Halla hit the gas. The Land Rover sputtered a bit and disappeared around the curve.

  Crane crawled over the bank and dropped down into the river channel, landing at the edge of the water. The river looked cold and impossibly pure. He leaned back against the bank and checked the Sako. Halla had taken good care of it. There were five rounds in the magazine. The rifle’s carbon fiber stock made it surprisingly light. Crane held it in one hand and made his way down the water’s edge.

  The river was calm here but quick, fed by dozens of small streams that tumbled down the steep slopes of the valley. Crane walked on bare earth, and occasionally had to wade into the water. It was as cold as he expected. He wished he could hear what was going on up on the road, but the rushing water was like white noise, drowning more distant sounds.

  Crane followed the river around a sweeping curve until he was sure he was past the Datafall checkpoint. The steep bank formed a natural rampart. He stood and his eyes were more or less at ground level. He was about thirty yards past the trucks, he realized. The farmer’s 4Runner was closest to him, facing him on the other side of the road. The Suburban was on the near shoulder, but farther up and facing away from him.

  Halla had stopped her Land Rover several yards from the roadblock and let them come to her. She was still in the driver’s seat talking with one of them. That one had only a pistol on his belt. The other one held an MP5 and stood in the middle of the road several yards back. The submachine gun wasn’t exactly pointed at her, but it was ready for use, and the man’s stance and the way he held the gun sent a clear message.

  Halla and the man at her window were arguing in Icelandic, and the one with the gun was watching them closely. Crane quietly lay the rifle down on the bank and pulled himself up. He rolled up over the edge and lay on the ground. From here he had a clear field of fire, but he really didn’t want to shoot these men if it could be avoided. He wanted Halla’s help, and even though she’d given him the rifle, slaughtering two men was unlikely to ease her fears. If he wounded one or both of them, he couldn’t simply leave them here to die. They’d have to summon medical help at that point, which meant police and a lot of difficult questions.

  All of which meant the rifle wasn’t nearly as much of an asset as it might have been.

  In the meantime, Halla was getting more angry in the driver’s seat of the Land Rover. She was giving him a distraction, and he needed to make the most of it. They needed to figure out what had happened to her friend who owned the Toyota. Crane got to his feet and dashed across the road behind the two guards. There he hit the dirt again and crawled as quickly as he could toward the roadblock until the 4Runner’s body hid him.

  He heard the Land Rover’s rattling old engine sputter a few times and stop. Then the door creaked open. He rose up to peer over the hood. Halla was out on the road beside the Land Rover now. He couldn’t understand either of them, but the tone was growing more tense. The one with the SMG was focused on them.

  Crane edged back along the far side of the Toyota. It was well used. Like the Land Rover, the front seats were cracked. There was a coffee-stained plastic travel mug on the dash, and what looked like a day’s mail on the passenger seat.

  He crept a few more steps until he could see into the back. The rear seats held only a well-used
dog blanket. But in the back of the 4Runner, curled up among a set of jumper cables, a plastic bucket, and various other supplies, was a very angry looking farmer. His wrists were secured behind his back with zip ties. They’d secured his ankles as well, meaning they’d either done this to him in the back of the truck, or they’d had to pick him up and throw him back there. His mouth was covered in his own duct tape.

  He looked up at Crane in fear. Crane tried to look reassuring, and put a finger to his lips. The man—Gunnar, Crane remembered—furiously cocked his head in the direction of the Land Rover and the Datafall team. He could hear Halla arguing, and if he was her friend, he probably knew her disposition and where things were likely to lead.

  Crane nodded and sank back down out of sight. Off this side of the road was an old stone sheep sorting pen. Crane scrambled off the road and rolled over the top of the wall. Here he had better cover. He moved back until he had a better view of the Datafall men between the two vehicles.

  It didn’t take Halla long to irritate them. Suddenly the one talking to her stepped back and drew his pistol. He started barking orders in Icelandic. The other one slung his submachine gun over his shoulder and pulled a handful of zip ties off his belt. Perfect.

  Crane rechecked the rifle as they walked Halla back to the Suburban. One held the pistol on her while the other opened the back door. Apparently the plan was to put her in the car while they moved the Land Rover off the road.

  Crane sighted down the Sako’s barrel and pulled the trigger. The rifle cracked and the window of the Suburban’s open rear door exploded into glittering fragments of safety glass.

  All three of them flinched. The one with the pistol whirled, looking for the shooter. The one with the SMG fumbled his handful of zip ties and scrabbled to get the gun off his shoulder. Crane worked the bolt to chamber another round and fired again. This time he blew out the front side window and spider webbed the windshield.