Aftershocks

by Mark Parragh

  The workout had given him one benefit; he was warm, even sweating a bit. That wouldn’t last though. Crane was tempted to find a sheltered spot to curl up and get some sleep, but he wasn’t sure he trusted the weather. The air was calm now, heavy and moist, clinging to the hills. But he’d seen how quickly a strong, cold wind could come up and clear it all away. He needed to take maximum advantage of the low cloud cover while he had it.

  A long day’s hike, then. With no sleep and little food. It was just like his training again, Crane thought. He aimed for the ridgeline and set out, bound for whatever he could find.

  Chapter 19

  Einar looked at his ringing phone. The call had come, just as he knew it would. It was well into the afternoon. They’d given him as much time as they could.

  “Set us down,” he shouted to the pilot. “Immediately.”

  The helicopter slewed to the right, toward a flat area beside a small, gravel road. As it descended, Einar accepted the call.

  It was Benediktsson at least. He was the board’s most junior member. The signal was clear. Einar still had the board’s confidence. They had to take an interest, but were interfering as little as protocol would allow.

  Einar went through the motions. He explained the nature of the previous night’s brushfire event, the scope of the data leak, the actions he had taken to contain the damage.

  Benediktsson did express concern about the high-profile recovery operation, particularly the attack on the delivery truck. That was only what Einar expected. He didn’t ask for details of Einar’s plans going forward—another good sign. Einar offered the details anyway. It was possible they would be called on to suppress further actions. The man had been on the loose nearly twenty-four hours now. The area to be covered kept getting larger. Eventually it would encompass the entire country. It would be too vast for them to search.

  But the man couldn’t simply live forever out in the back country. Indeed, if he did, that would be fine. The data leak wasn’t even a leak unless the thief could get the data out of Iceland. To get out, simply to move around the country, he still would have to pass through particular choke points. Towns and villages, roadway intersections. There simply weren’t that many roads in Iceland. The farther their target tried to go, the fewer choices he would have.

  Therefore, he explained to Benediktsson, he was changing his strategy. He would still be searching for his target directly from the air. But beyond that, he would identify those places the man was likely to pass through and move men there to set up a screen and wait for him.

  Benediktsson expressed every confidence in him, thanked him for his tireless efforts. They went through all the elements of the ritual. But as he hung up, Einar knew he was on the clock. If he didn’t bring the man down soon, the next call would come from someone higher up in the board hierarchy. Already their confidence was shaken, whether they chose to acknowledge it or not. This was the first real brushfire event in the company’s history; the few petty hacker attacks that had been given the name previously didn’t truly deserve it. And it had happened on his watch. While he was at the damned symphony. This had started badly and every hour it went on, it got noticeably worse.

  “Four teams are inbound, sir,” one of his men announced.

  Einar looked up the road and saw a caravan of large, black American SUVs headed toward them. They drove in a tight line, moving fast. These were just the closest. The rest of the teams were moving up from the south. Enough for him to deploy in a wide net around the area.

  He stepped down from the helicopter as the SUVs pulled up nearby and the eight men inside got out. Einar gathered them around the helicopter. One had brought him a crisply folded black duty uniform and a pair of boots. Finally, he could get out of the ridiculous tuxedo. He ran a fingertip across a lapel; it was a total loss, he thought. Between the wear and tear of the helicopter and the diesel smoke, he doubted he’d ever get it into proper shape again. He doubted he’d be able to recover the woman he’d abandoned at Harpa either. One more thing to blame the son of a bitch for. That had been a promising relationship.

  He stripped out of the tuxedo and changed into the fresh uniform as he laid out his orders. Let them see him in his underwear. What did it matter now?

  “Our man has been in the countryside for most of a day now,” he told them. “He’s on foot. He’s got only what he can carry. He’s cold, he’s tired, and he’s hungry. We can’t turn over every square meter of the country looking for him. But he has to come out of the back country at some point. And when he does, we’ll be waiting for him.”

  He pointed at the teams, one after the other. “You’re in charge of First Wing. Second Wing. Third, and Fourth. As other teams arrive from the south, divide them among yourselves. The others will report to you. You’ll report directly to me. I want two teams patrolling the Ring Road on either side of Blönduós. Let’s assume he’s still headed for Akureyri. Otherwise, place your teams at remote intersections. I want regular checkpoints. Stop all traffic, check everything moving on the roads. Tell them you’re National Police if you need to. Any remaining teams, send them down the back roads. Put the word out to farmsteads. Tell them he’s a dangerous criminal, armed and on the run. Say he’ll be looking to steal food, or a car, and he already killed a woman at a farm near Borgarnes. Put the fear of God in them. If some local shoots him on sight, I’ll settle for that.”

  They spent a few more minutes working out the details. When Einar was satisfied, he sent them off. He watched the convoy of SUVs speed away on the narrow road and wondered if his plan would work. Even if it did work, was it enough to save the situation? He was improvising at this point, going way outside the scope of his job description. That description was necessarily vague, but a big part of it was protecting Datafall’s assets while keeping a low profile. The fewer people who noticed the company, the better. He wasn’t doing either thing very well at the moment.

  He climbed back aboard the helicopter, and the pilot started up the rotors. Einar wasn’t one to dwell on past mistakes. The way to fix this was to focus on the immediate goal. Stop the bastard before he got out of Iceland. As long as the data didn’t make it out, they could deal with any collateral damage created in the process, like the truck driver.

  He signaled to the pilot, and the helicopter sprang back into the moist, cool air. He had his net in place. Now to drive his quarry forward into it.

  Chapter 20

  Stavanger Airport, Sola Norway

  The Gulfstream sat parked on a ramp in the general aviation area. Georges lay sprawled in the back of the plane with his feet up on the table, listening to music on his phone. He checked his watch. Assuming it was on schedule, the Celebrity Eclipse had sailed from Akureyri more than two hours ago. There was still no word from Crane. It was becoming harder to avoid the inescapable conclusion. Crane had missed the ship.

  In his headphones, Soul Makossa faded out and the lilting voices of Sir Shina Peters’ Sewele took its place. Georges noticed and smiled for a moment. It was always this way when he was nervous. He would subconsciously start to shift his playlist from the modern hip-hop he usually favored to the older afrobeat that had surrounded him when he was a boy. Peters, Manu Dibango, Amadou and Mariam, Les Têtes Brûlées. Part of him still found comfort in the remnants of his old life in Cameroon.

  It had been a good life, he thought. His father had been a university administrator, his mother a French teacher. His sister, three years younger than Georges, had been breaking hearts in high school, and he’d been studying to be an engineer. He had friends, a career in the wings. It had been a very good life until his father ran afoul of Patrice Kamkuma.

  Georges had heard of Patrice’s son Yanis. He had a reputation around campus, but they moved in very different circles and had never met. But Patrice was a big man in the north, used to getting what he wanted. What he wanted was an unearned diploma for his lazy, entitled son. His father refused to fix it, and that was when the threats had begun.

&nb
sp; It was a month later that his mother was attacked while his father was away in America at a conference. The whole family had fled Cameroon, and none of their lives had ever been the same again.

  Rationally, Georges knew that it wasn’t his fault. There was nothing he could have done. But another part of him couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have been there. That he should have protected his mother. That he’d let her down.

  And now he’d done it again. He didn’t know how, but the spread spectrum system he’d developed to guide Crane through the mission had failed somehow. It was his system, his responsibility. And now, Crane’s backup plan had apparently failed as well. He was still trapped in Iceland.

  Georges switched off the music. He didn’t want to be comforted right now. He wanted to make it right. He wanted to do something this time.

  He pulled out the tactical map of Iceland. There was Akureyri, on the northern coast. The map showed airfields, including one at Akureyri, but he had to assume that Datafall was hunting Crane, and that meant assuming they would be watching the airports that were the most obvious way out of the country.

  Except one, he realized, looking at the map. He turned around in his chair and looked forward toward the cockpit. Then he remembered the pilots weren’t there. They were inside at a coffee shop, seeing no reason to stay aboard the Gulfstream while they waited. He grabbed the map and made his way to the exit door.

  Georges hurried across the ramp to the diner. The pilots were seated at a table by the window. The pilot was the older one, the co-pilot the younger one, who Georges thought was Greek or maybe from the Middle East. They were chatting over coffee and pastry. Georges rushed up and slapped the map down on the table, nearly knocking over the pilot’s coffee.

  “Grimsey Island,” he said, pointing at the map. “Can you get me there?”

  “Calm down!” said the pilot. “Start at the beginning.”

  Georges pulled up a chair and pointed at a tiny white speck on the blue field of the sea. “Grimsey Island. It’s about 40 kilometers off the coast. It’s not safe to land in Akureyri, but they won’t be watching there. It has an airport. We fly there. I take the ferry to the mainland and find Crane. Then we take the ferry back out and we’re gone.”

  “Hold on,” said the pilot, looking at the scale of Georges’ map and the size of the island. “Hold on. That can’t be much of an airport.”

  The co-pilot took out his phone, fired up an app, and started typing. “… s,e,y?” he asked.

  Georges nodded. A moment later the co-pilot shook his head. Then he showed the screen to the pilot.

  “There’s a reason they won’t be looking there,” he said. “Because we won’t be there.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s right,” said the pilot. “That’s not an airport; it’s a driveway. The book says they’ve got 3,400 feet of runway. Our takeoff distance is more than 5,000.”

  Georges felt himself starting to deflate. He fought it off. “Crane’s in danger. Real danger. If they catch him, he’s dead. How firm is that distance?”

  “It’s firm!” said the co-pilot, jabbing his finger at the map. “You cannot land a Gulfstream on that thing. You could crash it, but that’s not the same thing.”

  “I don’t know,” said the pilot, musing, running figures in his head.

  “And you sure as hell couldn’t take off again!” protested the co-pilot.

  “It’s at sea level,” said the pilot. “Cold, dense air. Running into a headwind with a light load. We might be able to do it.”

  Georges turned to him. “Are you saying you’ll fly me?”

  “No, he isn’t!” snapped the co-pilot. “I’ll call Mr. Sulenski if you make me. I’m not letting you kill yourselves just because you’re worried about Crane.”

  The pilot sighed and nodded. “Sulenski will definitely not go for it.”

  Georges turned and fired some side-eye at the copilot. Then a small plane taxied past on the ramp. Georges nodded to the co-pilot’s phone.

  “How far is it from here to Grimsey?” he asked.

  The co-pilot punched in the airport codes and read off the result. “Shade over 900 miles.”

  “All right,” said Georges. “This is an airport. There are airplanes everywhere. What can fly for 1,000 miles and take off in less than 3,400 feet?”

  “Twin-engine props,” said the co-pilot.

  “Sure, all kinds of those,” the pilot added. “Skylane will do it.”

  “King Air or a Baron will do it easy,” said the co-pilot.

  “Maybe even a Bonanza,” suggested the pilot.

  “Eh, you’d be cutting it awful close on the range,” said the co-pilot. “You pick up a headwind…”

  The pilot made a noise that acknowledged the point.

  “Okay!” said Georges. “Twin engine propeller plane. Thank you. Enjoy your coffee.”

  He grabbed his map and set out into the larger terminal. John Crane wasn’t the only one that could abuse his company credit card until it screamed.

  Hang on, Crane, he thought as he stalked the corridors looking for a charter operator. I’m coming for you.

  Chapter 21

  Crane struggled along the ridge in the gloom. It was nighttime again, though that didn’t mean much here. The overcast was less bright than it had been some hours ago. The land seemed timeless. There was only clammy mist and bare earth. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the sound of his footsteps and his breathing. He hadn’t heard the helicopter in hours. He supposed that was a good thing, though he knew they hadn’t given up.

  Crane was miserable. He was cold. He’d eaten the last of his granola bars hours ago, and he was hungry. The water bottle stuffed in his pack was empty. He couldn’t stay out here forever. He needed to head down into the valley and find water, a place to sleep, something to eat. According to his GPS, he was running out of ridge anyway. It was time to descend into the valley to his east where there were streams and farms.

  Crane veered to his left and started down the slope.

  He made his way down into actual darkness. Behind the overcast layer, the sun had descended far enough to put him in the shadow of the ridge behind him. That was a plus, but it wouldn’t last. Soon enough the sun would climb higher again. Already he felt the wind starting to pick up. Eventually the sky would clear, and the helicopter would have much better searching conditions. He needed to find someplace to get out of sight before that happened. The landscape was still horribly uncooperative. As he descended the ridge, he started to see patches of lichen and thin, scrubby bushes that kept low to the ground. There was still nothing remotely like cover.

  He checked his watch again. He’d long since missed the ship in Akureyri. As he walked, he reconsidered his plan. What was the best way to get out of Iceland now? He supposed he’d have to get to an airport and charter a plane. It was a much more predictable step. The cruise ship might have taken them by surprise, but they’d be expecting him to make a play for an airport. Still, that was the option left to him. And Akureyri was still the best place to do that outside of Reykjavik itself. It was the second largest city in the country, though that didn’t mean much in a place where a third of the population lived in the capital. He would be more likely to find a plane there than anywhere else. And there would be more people around. If he couldn’t disappear in a crowd, at least more people would make it harder for Datafall to simply gun him down. As they’d done to August.

  Crane remembered the big driver’s friendly laugh, the way he’d fought to keep control of his truck as the bullets shredded the cab. Crane remembered the man in the tuxedo, too, stalking out of the glare of the helicopter’s lights. His face, his blond buzz cut. The way he walked with the machine gun butted into the crook of his elbow. Crane remembered him very well indeed. His job now was to get himself and the data tap out of Iceland. But he’d make sure he crossed paths with that man again one day. Crane walked on, letting his anger and his discomfort blend into grim determinat
ion.

  As the slope leveled out into the valley floor, the grass became thicker, but there was still nothing that could hide him from an aerial search. He saw a small group of horses off in the distance and headed in their direction.

  In his week in Iceland, Crane had taken several guided tours between trips to scout out the Datafall complex. They helped him learn about the country and cemented his cover as a tourist. On one tour, the guide had told Crane about the stout, long-haired Icelandic ponies. They were descended from horses the original Viking settlers brought over when they arrived a thousand years ago. They had an extra gait, whatever that meant—Crane was no horseman if he could help it. But after a thousand years of isolation here, they were a distinct breed. The guide had told him that it was forbidden to bring other horses into the country for fear the local population would be wiped out by equine diseases they had no resistance to. And if one of these horses was taken out of Iceland for any reason, it could never return.

  The horses noticed his approach and kept their distance, though they didn’t seem particularly afraid of him. As he suspected he would, he found a stream they’d been drinking from. He drank and refilled his bottle. It was a start. He held out a hand and clucked his tongue, but the horses weren’t interested in making friends. Finally, Crane nodded to them and moved on.

  Overhead the sky was growing brighter. The clouds were breaking up and shafts of sunlight broke through at low angles to illuminate patches of meadow and hillside. Crane walked for another half hour, then he stopped and listened. The helicopter was back in the air. He could hear it faintly, the sound drifting off the hills. It was far away still, but it would find him if he didn’t do something soon. Crane picked up his pace.

  After another half mile or so, he came upon a small stone cairn and a faint trail heading roughly parallel to the ridgeline. He turned and followed it north. It seemed to head closer to the river in that direction. It would take him someplace, if the helicopter didn’t find him first. In the meantime, he could try to pass for a hiker. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t have anything better. If he were wildly lucky, he might even find a real hiker or two to fall in with. They’d be looking for one man, and a group might deceive them.