Operation Stranglehold (8 page)

“I want to show you something,” Walter said to me. He led the way around the curve to the edge of the abyss where he pointed across it. “See that?”

“That” was a tangle of long strips of steel guardrail that had been torn from their posts by the downrushing flood. Most were badly twisted, but one or two seemed comparatively straight. Through some freak of the destructive water-force, the guardrail on our side still remained firmly bolted to its posts.

“If a couple of those had ripped off on our side, we might have been able to use them to get across,” I said.

The blond youth looked at me quizzically. “A twenty-foot horizontal pole vault?”

I had already visually compared the length of the guardrail against the deep slash in the roadway. I was sure it could make it across the gap. I looked up at the almost vertical, jaggedly cut face of the upper slope of the mountain, down which a fine mist of spray was still falling, residue of the flood. “Could a mountain climber make it across, Walter?” I asked.

He stared upward at the nearly perpendicular overhang, calculating. Then he looked at me to see if I were serious. Finally he gazed down into the impassable fissure that barred our way. He spat on his hands and rubbed them together. “What happens when I get across?” he asked.

He’d said “when” not “if.” It could have been cockiness, but it was the second time I’d seen his superficiality melt away when faced with reality. “Take the straightest rail and bridge the gap with it,” I answered. “I’m sure it’s long enough, but you’ll have to be sure you have it aimed properly, or you’ll lose the rail in the pit. There’s a length of rope in one of the knapsacks; I think it’s in Hazel’s. Wait till I get it.”

Hazel and Lisa were standing beside Erikson when I went back around the bend. The redhead came over to me when I began to rummage in her knapsack. “I suppose the kid was shocked because I got a look at her bare ass?” I said.

“She’s not a very shockable young lady,” Hazel returned. “She has a wise old head on her young shoulders. For instance, when I was apologizing to her for your attitude—”

“Why the hell should you have to apologize to her for my attitude?” I thrust in.

Hazel continued, ignoring the interruption. “—by telling her that you were really a lamb, do you know what she said?” She didn’t wait for my response. “She said that you were the kind of lamb to make wolves seek other employment.” Hazel giggled, then sobered as I removed a supple length of manila from her knapsack. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Come along and see.”

She followed me around the bend where young Croswell was intently studying the smooth-looking face of the upper slope. He tied one end of the rope around his waist securely, and I uncoiled the length of line and fastened the other end to a firmly anchored guardrail post. Walter didn’t waste any time. He climbed the bank to the first level and then began to edge his way across the wet cliff-face with only a sheer drop beneath him.

“God, that’s dangerous!” Hazel muttered from beside me.

I paid out line as Walter worked his way across. Twenty feet isn’t far, but I couldn’t even see the tiny niches in the rock he used for hand and foot holds. He rested for a moment when he found a minute outcropping on which he could rest both feet. I relaxed my own tensed shoulder muscles; I felt as if I’d been climbing with him.

“Oh!” I heard a sharp exclamation from behind me. Lisa was standing there, her eyes upon Walter, a hand pressed to her mouth. Hazel slipped a comforting arm around her waist. When I looked back at the cliff-face, Walter had resumed his human fly act and was steadily advancing toward the far side of the gap. I heard Lisa’s tremulously explosive exhaled breath when Walter completed his passage of the mist-sprayed rock face and dropped down to the road on the other side of the gap.

He went immediately to the interlocked guardrails and wrenched loose the straightest one. I’d expected him to rest after his passage; instead, he worked the guardrail upright until he had it standing on end. The kid not only had guts; he was a hell of an athlete.

“Aim it across the narrowest point!” I yelled at him.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement, then started the upper portion of the rail in our direction. It landed with a solid thud on our side of the gap and bounded two feet into the air. I jumped on the end when it bounced a second time to keep it from going down into the pit. The second bounce almost threw me, but my weight held the rail in place. There was a good four feet of purchase extending on either side of the crevasse. We had ourselves a bridge.

“Go get Erikson,” I told Hazel. While she was at it I untied my end of the manila line from the guardrail post, coiled up what I could, and flung it across the gap to Walter Croswell. We might have need of it again.

Hazel returned with Erikson and the knapsacks. Lisa slipped into hers. It was a measure of Erikson’s dull-eyed condition that he stared at the abyss and the single length of steel spanning it with no comment.

Hazel lowered herself astraddle our crude bridge. Walter Croswell and I stood on its opposite ends. “Stretch out flat and distribute your weight,” I told Hazel. Cautiously but surely she slithered across the washed-out gorge with smooth, steady, swimming movements that made it look easy.

“You’re next,” I told Lisa. “Give me your knapsack. It might unbalance you. I’ll take it across for you.”

She pushed my held-out hand away. “I can manage,” she said, although her face was pale.

Well, crap on you, kid, I thought to myself. If your un-dies are all that precious to you, carry on.

The girl dropped down on the rail and locked her legs beneath it. I could see that her eyes were closed as she started to inch her way across. She made it halfway, and then she must have opened her eyes. I could see her body go rigid as she clung to the rail. “Keep going!” I called. “Keep going, Lisa!”

I don’t know if she even heard me. She was paralyzed with terror. I saw Walter Croswell beckon to Hazel to take his place standing on the end of the rail, and then he dropped down upon it at his end.

“It won’t support two people!” I shouted at him.

He hesitated, then inched out partway. He stopped when the rail began to sag from the combined weight. He extended an arm toward Lisa while talking softly to her. I couldn’t hear what he said, but she raised her head and looked toward him. It was another full minute before she began moving in his direction. When their hands touched and Walter secured a grip on her wrist, I heard Hazel’s sigh of relief clear across the gap.

Then I helped Erikson down onto the rail. I knew he wasn’t going to have an easy time, but there was nothing I could do to help. It took him twice as long as it had Lisa to make the passage, and it was plain that every millimeter was torture. Walter helped him up on the other side, but Karl immediately slumped to his knees.

It was my turn. From a flat position on the rail it looked twice as far to the other side. In the middle of the span the rail began to bob sickeningly because there was no one behind me to hold down the loose end. I moved in uneven spurts to break up a regular rhythm of movement which might accentuate the undulations. I welcomed the firm handclasp with which Walter dragged me toward solid ground.

Hazel was kneeling beside Karl Erikson. “He’s had it,” she told me. “He’s not going to be able to make it on his own.”

One look was enough to confirm her diagnosis.

We’d finessed one problem only to be faced with another.

Walter and I took the end of the guardrail and threw it into the pit. The whole shining length whirled and twisted as it fell into the mud-packed pond at the bottom of the washout.

There was no help for it, despite Erikson’s condition; we had to keep moving. Hazel and I stationed ourselves on either side of him while Walter and Lisa led the way. The clouds had dissipated, and the sun beat down steadily. Erikson shuffled forward uncomplainingly, but it was only Hazel’s supporting shoulder on his good side that kept him upright.

I called a halt late in the afternoon. I had no idea where we were. Erikson did, if I could get it out of him. Walter and Lisa sat down at the edge of the road. He had stayed close to the girl ever since the crossing over the washout. It was as though he’d suddenly recognized a frailty calling for his support. I saw Hazel observing them with a Mona Lisa smile. The redhead has the correct temperament to encourage romance under the world’s worst conditions.

I waited until Erikson had recovered a little from his last stretch of foot-slogging. I didn’t like the flesh color of his battered arm. There was a dull red puffiness which I hoped came from sun exposure and not the start of a serious infection. I gave him a drink of water from my canteen. “Do you know where we are, Karl?” I asked quietly. I didn’t want to disturb the others by indicating our dependency upon his knowledge of the countryside.

Erikson tried to rally his pain-dulled faculties. He sat up straighter and studied the sweep of pine-clad hills dropping away below us. “That’s the Lorida River valley—down there,” he said, pointing. “Village—within two or three miles. Place I told—you about that’s a—railway drop-off point—for vacationers.” A momentary spark of animation stirred him. “Old road—this side of rail line. Only shepherds use—since engineers changed grade—of this one. Lean-to shelter fronting cave—where they keep sheep—during storms. Good—vantage point. Overlooks village, railroad, and roads.”

We needed a good vantage point to say nothing of a lean-to shelter in which we could get Erikson off his feet. Then there was the question of our rapidly dwindling food supply. I had already made up my mind to effect a night-time breaking-and-entering at the first village we came to. The chance of casing the town in daylight from the vantage point was a real plus.

“We’ve got to get moving again, Karl,” I told him.

“Help me—up,” he said doggedly.

I helped him up, and we started off again. I had estimated two hours to reach the old road Erikson had described, even at our inchworm pace. It took us three because of his mounting disability. There was no mistaking now that his flushed features signaled increasing fever.

Once while bringing up the rear with Erikson, I heard the clop-clop of hooves on the hard earth road. We took cover in brush as a mule-cart came up behind us, going the same way we were. The cart had evidently come up some trail from the valley on this side of the washout. A pipe-smoking old woman was perched on the squeaking-wheeled cart amidst a clutter of empty fruit boxes. A horse would have smelled us and whinnied his curiosity. The mule plodded stolidly by.

I’d become aware that Walter and Lisa were conducting an increasingly heated, although low-voiced, conversation. Because of the sound-carrying quality of the mountain air I was about to tell them to knock it off, until I saw that Hazel was listening shamelessly.

“It’s totally unnecessary,” Walter was saying heatedly.

“It is for the good of all,” Lisa insisted. Neither was aware of an audience. “It’s best that I go on by myself. I’m a burden and a risk. All I have to do is reach the American consulate. I’ll be granted political asylum there.”

“I’ve already told you I can get all the help you’ll need at our company’s office in Madrid!” Water expostulated. “With a lot less risk. No red tape. No unanswerable questions.”

“It would be less risky for you if I went on alone, Walter.”

“Stick with me like we planned!” the blond youth returned. He sounded angry. “I’ll get you out of the country. How will you know who to trust in Madrid?”

Lisa turned her head to one side, but I could see that she was crying. Walter made a baffled, typically masculine sound in the face of this female waterworks eruption. Beside me Erikson spoke up unexpectedly. I hadn’t been aware that he was listening.

“No time—for talk,” he rasped from a dry throat. “Got to—get off this road or—wind up buried so deep—in rotten Spanish jail that—corner of hell will seem—like paradise.”

“He’s right,” Hazel said briskly.

Once again we set out. Hazel divided her time between Erikson and Lisa. The girl regained control of herself in the warmth of Hazel’s sympathy. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to make the cave shelter tonight?” Walter suggested to me. He had his eye upon Erikson.

I shook my head. “This is the siesta hour. Nothing should be moving around these parts except flies on a manure pile. Later we might not be so fortunate.”

It was Walter who eventually found the old road. I had been doing rearguard duty with Erikson again. The big man was reduced to a zombielike plodding. Walter was waiting beside an overgrown path so weed-covered that it took a second look to see it had once been something more substantial.

“The shepherd’s lean-to is about two hundred yards up the hill,” Walter said. “There’s a high point just beyond it affording a marvelous look down into the village. I couldn’t see anything moving on the road leading down into it.”

“Let’s get to the lean-to,” I said.

Walter and I half dragged Erikson up the old road. The lean-to was no larger than a single-car garage, but the open back wall was the cave entrance. Inside was a blackened fireplace which used a rock fissure for a natural flue, and a crude bed made of braided rope over a rough wooden frame.

Walter and I lowered Erikson onto the bed. His big frame made it look like doll’s furniture. The bed began to wobble visibly from the chills that shook him. Hazel noticed too. She began to gather scraps of wood from previous fires and place them in the fireplace.

“No fire until after dark,” I warned. I returned her you-heartless-bastard stare. “No sentimentality, baby. It’s for his good, too.”

She didn’t answer me.

She went to Erikson, and I went outside into the diminishing sunlight.

I found the promontory Walter had mentioned with
out any trouble. It was all that Karl had claimed for it as a lookout point. The village below was as exposed as though on the palm of my hand. The single-track rail line crossed the valley through a pass between two distant hills, entered the village, and stopped beside a dun-colored building that could only be the station.

By the time the sun started to set behind the highest cliffs, I had the village’s street plan memorized. A few buildings I had marked for closer attention that night. It was dark inside the cave when I returned to it. Erikson’s fever had again taken over from his chills. Hazel was bathing his forehead with a damp cloth. Walter and Lisa were asleep in a corner with their arms around each other and even their feet intertwined. I kicked the soles of each to waken them. “Collect firewood,” I told them as they sat up with a start. “Before it gets too dark.”

Hazel looked up from her self-imposed task when the lovebirds exited into the gathering twilight. “Karl needs a doctor, Earl. He’s hot as a branding iron one minute and shaking with chills the next,” she said.

“Maybe we can get some hot soup into him when we get a fire started after dark.” Not that I expected any miraculous results. Erikson’s condition had gone unattended too long. Anyone without his rawhide constitution would have collapsed long ago.

I arranged kindling in the rough-hewn fireplace and looked around for tinder. Lisa’s knapsack, propped against a rock wall, had its flap open. Inside, I could see what appeared to be a newspaper-wrapped bundle. I took out the package and rolled it open. A pair of none-too-new tennis shoes dropped out.

I wadded up the paper and thrust it under the sparse kindling, prepared to wait until Walter and Lisa brought more. I was still kneeling in front of the fireplace when the pair of them reentered the lean-to entrance to the cave, laden with firewood. Lisa made a sound like a bleating sheep when she saw her tennis shoes on the rocky floor. She dropped her load of wood and ran to her shoes, then spun around, her eyes darting everywhere until they came to the fireplace.

“No!” she gasped when she saw the crumpled newspaper.

She pushed me away from the fireplace as she snatched up the paper and trotted back to her knapsack. She rewrapped the shoes in the paper, then thrust the package into the depths of the knapsack. She huddled over her cache with the defensive mien of a protective animal mother guarding a newborn litter.

Everyone had half frozen where they were during this procedure. If they were like me, they were wondering if the strain of the past couple of days had caused the girl to lose her marbles. Even Walter Croswell looked surprised.

He was the first to react. He went to the girl and placed his arm around her shoulders. She remained on her knees, still crouched above the knapsack. She appeared neither to accept nor reject his attention.

The little incident had somehow penetrated Karl Erikson’s apathy. He pushed aside Hazel’s brow-wiping hand and sat up on the braided-rope bed with a grunt. He heaved himself to his feet, his good arm using Hazel as a crutch. The expression on his face was different from the withdrawn, tightly repressed, pain-wracked look I had seen ever since he climbed out of the prison van.

He hobbled to the corner where Walter still had his arm around Lisa. “Give us—a minute alone,” Erikson said hoarsely to the blond youth. Walter hesitated, but finally stood up and came over and joined Hazel and me.

“What does he want?” he asked Hazel.

“I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s all right,” she said soothingly.

Erikson had awkwardly lowered himself to his knees and then seated himself beside Lisa. Their heads were almost touching as Erikson spoke to the girl in an unintelligibly low-toned, rasping murmur that went for some while. Lisa nodded her head several times. Finally she called Walter over and he joined the powwow.

His stay at the council fire was brief. He came back to us smiling, his manner more open than I had seen it previously. “Maybe I’ve had you figured wrong,” he said to me.

“Oh? What changed your mind?”

“How long have you two been teamed up together?” he answered a question with a question. He glanced toward Erikson and then back to me. “Well, I’ll look for a little more firewood,” he said when he saw I wasn’t going to reply. He went outside.

“Karl’s turning into a case of verbal diarrhea,” I said to Hazel. “The fever must be getting to him.”

“He seems more lucid right now than he has in the past several hours,” she objected. “He must have a reason for whatever he’s saying.”

“If he was up to par, I’d say yes.”

“I still think he knows what he’s doing, Earl.” Hazel began to make wood shavings with a hunting knife.

The conference broke up.

Lisa, predictably, went outside to join Walter.

Hazel took the matches from my pocket and lighted her wood shavings. She added twigs to the resulting tiny flames, then branches. The fire took off and roared up the natural flue. I went outside to check whether any smoke was visible. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see a thing.

Erikson was back on the wooden-framed bed when I went inside. “Oh, Earl,” he said to me. His voice was clearer and stronger than it had been all day. “A new dimension,” he said when I knelt down beside him.

“What kind of a new dimension?” I humored him.

His forehead was still damp but his eyes were film-free. “Would you believe—the girl is more important—than the boy, Earl?”

“Not to me, she isn’t,” I said emphatically. “What are you trying to peddle?”

“I said enough to her just now to—gain her trust.”

“In eight minutes?”

“After a question or two I—knew what to say.”

“Why would she answer your questions, Karl?”

“Because I know some names that she knows.” He hitched himself around on the bed, trying to get more comfortable. “It was the newspaper, Earl. Her—reaction to losing it, I mean.”

“So? I think she’s a kook.”

“Listen—carefully.” Erikson paused to draw breath, still a difficult task for him. I was sure he had ribs broken. It reminded me that I was coming up to a decision about him tomorrow that I’d been postponing. “I saw her yesterday—rewrapping her old shoes—in that paper,” Karl went on. “I got a look at it, and it’s—a local Paris suburban weekly that—normally doesn’t circulate outside—central France. It didn’t register—with me at the time but I knew—neither the girl nor young Croswell—had been anywhere near Paris.”

He paused as Hazel joined us. Her fire was blazing briskly. “How’s the water—holding out?” he asked her.

“There’s a beautiful spring right outside,” she replied, handing him a canteen.

He drank deeply, swallowing several times. “Neither Walter nor Lisa—speaks French,” he went on, “so I asked myself—why this devotion to a—French newspaper?” The effort to talk was interfering with his breathing; Hazel and I waited while he gathered strength again. “Then I remembered—Walter telling you her name—and her father’s name. It didn’t—impress me at the time, but Dr. Draznek’s activities—and those of some of his associates are—well known in certain U.S. government circles.”

“So her old man’s important,” I said when Erikson stopped. The sheen of fever perspiration was back on his forehead again and his voice was getting weaker. “How?”

“Newspaper’s—a courier device, Earl. More than factual death notices—been printed in its obituary column. False entries include—coded information concerning delicate, vital negotiations of prime—interest to the U.S.”

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard since Winters’ two goons showed up at the ranch,” I snorted. “All of a sudden we’re involved in a ‘can’t fail the country’ operation?”

“The newspaper is a clever idea,” Hazel broke in. “Who’d ever think wrapping paper worth a second look?”

“She said her tennis shoes—had been examined at two borders,” Erikson said. “Even—x-rayed once. No one—looked at the newspaper.”

“Are you sure she isn’t pulling your leg?” I asked skeptically. “She could be just another smartass kid running away from home.”

Erikson had been leaning up on one elbow; he stretched out on the bed again. “No,” he said wearily, but his voice carried conviction. “Dr. Draznek’s part of unusual organization—with which I’m familiar. Organization—in best interests our country—to preserve. Lisa’s message is—that secret organization has been—blown. American and British agents—in her country must be warned to get out because—exposure imminent.”

“What has that to do with us, Karl?”

“Got to steer her—in right direction.”

“We certainly do,” Hazel affirmed.

My own patriotism doesn’t assay as high to the ton as Hazel’s two hundred percent brand. While she accuses me of being too pragmatic, there are times I wish she were less starry-eyed.

So I preached them the gospel according to Drake. “I want the pair of you to listen to me,” I began. “I’m not about to change my priorities on this project just because you’ve got a bug up your ass about this Lisa situation. The kid should never have been included in the package in the first place as far as I’m concerned. My job—your job, for that matter, Karl—is to get young Croswell back to the U.S. quietly.”

Erikson struggled to a sitting position again. “Other—more important!” he got out.

“Forget it,” I said with what I hoped was finality. “Delivering papers for a bankrupt spy organization isn’t why we’re here.”

“Remember those civilians—in black sedan who showed up—and talked to the police—in Jeep?” Erikson paused to clear his throat. “Lisa just got across border—ahead of secret police. They’re—looking for her. She’s in danger.”

“It still has nothing to do with—”

“If you think you’re going to throw that girl to the wolves, Earl Drake, you have another think coming!” Hazel interrupted spiritedly.

I might have known.

“Wake me in three hours,” I growled, abandoning the argument.

Not that I had abandoned my conviction, but I had a job to do that night, and if it wasn’t successful, it might be quite a while before any of us made it out of Spain.

• • •

I woke with a start to find Hazel’s hand on my arm. I pulled my hand away from the butt of the Luger. “It’s nearly midnight, Earl,” she whispered.

“Thanks for playing alarm clock,” I yawned. I stretched lengthily to ease muscles cramped from contact with the unyielding floor of the cave, then looked over at the rope-bed upon which Erikson twitched in uneasy slumber. “How is he?”

“His temperature is up again.”

“Maybe I can latch onto something medicinal in the village.” I rose to my feet. “Try to get some sleep yourself.”

“You’ll be careful?”

“You know it.”

I went over to the other side of the cave, dimly illuminated by the light of the dying fire. Walter and Lisa had economized by using one sleeping bag, and the love-musk odor still in the air indicated he’d had less sleep than I had. I searched out his hip through the bag and prodded it with my toe. He muttered something without waking, and I applied more pressure. He bounced to a sitting position with a jerk. “Zip up your fly, stud,” I said when I saw Lisa was still asleep. “We’ve got work to do.”

I went back to the fire while he got himself organized. Beside it I picked up the meat scraps I’d salvaged from Hazel’s tin-can stew before I sacked out. Walter Croswell was ready at the cave entrance. I turned to look back. Hazel was already curled up with her head cradled upon her outstretched arms. We’d had a long couple of days.

I’d memorized the direction of what could be seen of the path leading down to the village. Convection clouds had again formed over the mountains in the late afternoon, diffusing the wan light from a nearly full moon. There was enough light to see, but each bush and rock was in heavy shadow. It was a good night for our purpose.

The descent was made with no more incident than the occasional night thrill of a toe caught upon a projecting root. The dark bulk of the village loomed up ahead of us. I wasn’t concerned that we’d find a night watch; the village was too small for that. What did concern me was the half-wild dogs that were part and parcel of every village in Spain.

“What a one-horse burg,” Walter Croswell muttered at my elbow. We were upon the last prominent elevation before entering the village. The narrow, cobblestoned streets, and single-storied, tile-roofed houses built of stone or some material smoother than stucco or adobe were plainly visible.

The stench of open sewers was wafted to us upon the night breeze. A light burned in the largest building, almost surely the cantina. A goodsized building next to it, probably a general store, was dark. The town was quiet. Spanish villagers, like other tillers of the soil, lead lives geared to the sun.

I executed a flanking movement before we approached the village. I wanted the breeze behind us so the dogs could smell the meat I was carrying as well as the strange man-odor. Unless specially trained, a dog will quickly forget his watchdog qualities if he thinks a meal is close by.

There was no fusillade of barking of the type I had feared. Instead, three hundred yards from the village we were surrounded by silent, sniffing animals of all sizes and shapes. I tossed the meat behind us, and we were at once deserted. There were the thuds of colliding bodies and an occasional growl or snap, but nothing to draw attention. A dog’s mentality is such that if he finds meat he will search quite a while in the same area for more. By the time the pack gave up I expected to be gone.

We entered the village proper with our footfalls muffled in yielding dust. There were only two streets; the road fragmented by the washout, which was the main street of the village, and another a short block away which acted as a service road to a loading dock alongside the station at the railroad track. The station was a shed, and the loading dock a raised platform, freight car high. Primitive wasn’t the word to describe the facilities.

I led the way from the station between the silent, whitewashed houses to the building with the light in it. We stopped under a roofed-over porch while I scouted the interior through a window that needed washing even worse than I did. It was Walter who noticed the letters
CANTINA EL CORSARIO
above the door. I motioned for him to follow me to the next building.