He was having trouble with the walkie-talkie. He extended the antenna, clicked switches and turned knobs, and then tossed it aside on to the moss. He spoke to the rifleman and pointed upwards, and the rifleman nodded. Then he stood up and turned to climb towards me.
I noted the direction he was taking, then turned my head to find a place to ambush him. There was a boulder just behind me about three feet high, so I pulled away from my peephole and dropped behind it in a crouch and took a firm hold of the cosh. I could hear him coming because he wasnt making much attempt to move quietly. His boots crunched on the ground and once there was a flow of gravel as he slipped and I heard a muttered curse. Then there was a change in the light as his shadow fell across me, and I rose up behind him and hit him.
Theres quite a bit of nonsense talked about hitting men on the head. From some accounts film and TV script writers its practically as safe as an anaesthetic used in an operating theatre; all that happens is a brief spell of unconsciousness followed by a headache not worse than a good hangover. A pity it isnt so because if it were the hospital anaesthetists would be able to dispense with the elaborate equipment with which they are now lumbered in favour of the time-honoured blunt instrument.
Unconsciousness is achieved by imparting a sharp acceleration to the skull bone so that it collides with the contents the brain. This results in varying degrees of brain damage ranging from slight concussion to death, and there is always lasting damage, however slight. The blow must be quite heavy and, since men vary, a blow that will make one man merely dizzy will kill another. The trouble is that until youve administered the blow you dont know what youve done.
I wasnt in any mood for messing about so I hit this character hard. His knees buckled under him and he collapsed, and I caught him before he hit the ground. I eased him down and turned him so that he lay on his back. A mangled cigar sagged sideways from his mouth, half bitten through, and blood trickled from the cigar butt to show he had bitten his tongue. He was still breathing.
I patted his pockets and came upon the familiar hard shape, and drew forth an automatic pistol a Smith & Wesson .38, the twin to the one I had taken from Lindholm. I checked the magazine to see if it was full and then worked the action to put a bullet into the breech.
The collapsed figure at my feet wasnt going to be much use to anybody even if he did wake up, so I didnt 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 didnt. But this was no time to worry about nationalities a man who throws bullets at you is automatically a bastard, and whether hes a Russian bastard or an American bastard makes little difference. I just said curtly, Turn around, but leave the rifle where it is or youll 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 Pops eldest son in a TV horse opera. He also looked dangerous. Ill be goddamned! he said softly.
You certainly will be if you dont 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. Wheres Joe? he asked.
Hes 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 didnt mean much; it didnt 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 didnt 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 grandfathers axe my father replaced the blade and I gave it a new haft.
What it had ended up as was the complete long-range assassins 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 mans 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 friends spine. Thats your gun you can feel, I said. You dont 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 didnt 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, Wheres Kennikin?
Who?
Dont be childish, I said. Ill ask you again wheres Kennikin?
I dont 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 dont 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. Youre still alive, arent 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 dont know I wasnt told.
That sounded crazy; it was even improbable enough to be true. I said, Whats your name?
John Smith.
I was to wait until someone showed up and then quit and go home.
And who was the someone?
I dont know I wasnt told.
That sounded crazy; it was even improbable enough to be true. I said, Whats 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 Ill 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 dont want you to make any sudden moves because Im 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 wouldnt 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 wasnt 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 didnt 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 Joes automatic pistol into the waistband of my trousers, unloading it first so I didnt 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 wasnt 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 wasnt 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 wasnt 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 hed 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 Fleets 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 didnt, 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 didnt 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 didnt think hed 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. Kennikins not far behind; lets move.
I set out towards the Land-Rover at a dead run, holding Elins 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 wed 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 its a law of nature that the ferry is always on the other side when you arrive at the waters edge. But that wouldnt 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 traveller in the Óbyggdir ought to consult, extreme care is necessary for people not acquainted with the system. Personally, I dont recommend it for those with queasy stomachs who have to cross in a high wind.