Kennikin as easily as dropping a deer. I have put a soft-nosed bullet into a deer and it has run for half a mile before dropping dead, and that with an exit wound big enough to put your fist in. A man can’t do that – his nervous system is too delicate and can’t stand the shock.
But I hadn’t my own rifle, and there was no percentage in opening fire at random. That would only tell Kennikin I was close, and it might be better if he didn’t know. So I let my fingers relax from the carbine and concentrated on watching what was going to happen next.
The arguing had stopped with Kennikin’s arrival, and I knew why, having worked with him. He had no time for futile blathering; he would accept your facts – and God help you if they were wrong – and then he would make the decisions. He was busily engaged in making one now.
I smiled as I saw someone point out the tracks of the Land-Rover entering the water and then indicate the other bank of the river. There were no tracks where we had left the water because we had been swept sideways a little, and that must have been puzzling to anyone who hadn’t seen it happen.
The man waved downstream eloquently but Kennikin shook his head. He wasn’t buying that one. Instead he said something, snapping his fingers impatiently, and someone else rushed up with a map. He studied it and then pointed off to the right and four of the men got into a jeep, reversed up the track, and then took off across country in a bumpy ride.
That made me wrinkle my brows until I remembered there was a small group of lakes over in that direction called Gaesavötn. If Kennikin expected me to be camping at Gaesavötn he’d draw a blank, but it showed how thorough and careful he was.
The crew from the other jeep got busy erecting a camp just off the track, putting up tents rather inexpertly. One of them went to Kennikin with a vacuum flask and poured out a cup of steaming hot coffee which he offered obsequiously. Kennikin took it and sipped it while still standing at the water’s edge looking across the impassable river. He seemed to be staring right into my eyes.
I lowered the glasses and withdrew slowly and cautiously, being careful to make no sound. I climbed down from the lava ridge and then slung the carbine and headed back to the Land-Rover at a fast clip, and checked to make sure there were no tyre marks to show where we had left the track. I didn’t think Kennikin would have a man swim the river – he could lose a lot of men that way – but it was best to make sure we weren’t stumbled over too easily.
Elin was asleep. She lay on her left side, buried in her sleeping bag, and I was thankful that she always slept quietly and with no blowing or snoring. I let her sleep; there was no reason to disturb her and ruin her night. We weren’t going anywhere, and neither was Kennikin. I switched on my pocket torch shading it with my hand to avoid waking her, and rummaged in a drawer until I found the housewife, from which I took a reel of black thread.
I went back to the track and stretched a line of thread right across it about a foot from the ground, anchoring each end by lumps of loose lava. If Kennikin came through during the night I wanted to know it, no matter how stealthily he went about it. I didn’t want to cross the river in the morning only to run into him on the other side.
Then I went down to the river and looked at it. The water level was still dropping and it might have been barely feasible to cross there and then had the light been better. But I wouldn’t risk it without using the headlights and I couldn’t do that because they’d certainly show in the sky. Kennikin’s mob wasn’t all that far away.
I dropped into my berth fully clothed. I didn’t expect to sleep under the circumstances but nevertheless I set the alarm on my wrist watch for two a.m. And that was the last thing I remember until it buzzed like a demented mosquito and woke me up.
II
We were ready to move at two-fifteen. As soon as the alarm buzzed I woke Elin, ruthlessly disregarding her sleepy protests. As soon as she knew how close Kennikin was she moved fast. I said, ‘Get dressed quickly. I’m going to have a look around.’
The black thread was still in place which meant that no vehicle had gone through. Any jeep moving at night would have to stick to the track; it was flatly impossible to cross the lava beds in the darkness. True, someone on foot might have gone through, but I discounted that.
The water in the river was nice and low and it would be easy to cross. As I went back I looked in the sky towards the east; already the short northern night was nearly over and I was determined to cross the river at the earliest opportunity and get as far ahead of Kennikin as I could.
Elin had different ideas. ‘Why not stay here and let him get ahead? Just let him go past. He’d have to go a long way before he discovered he’s chasing nothing.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We know he has two jeeps, but we don’t know if he has more. It could happen that, if we let him get ahead, we could be the meat in a sandwich and that might be uncomfortable. We cross now.’
Starting an engine quietly is not easy. I stuffed blankets around the generator in an attempt to muffle that unmistakable rasp, the engine caught and purred sweetly, and I took the blankets away. And I was very light-footed on the accelerator as we drove towards the river. We got across easily, although making more noise than I cared for, and away we went towards the next river.
I told Elin to keep a sharp eye to the rear while I concentrated on moving as fast as possible compatible with quietness. In the next four kilometres we crossed two more rivers and then there was a long stretch where the track swung north temporarily, and I opened up. We were now far enough away from Kennikin to make speed more important than silence.
Sixteen rivers in sixty kilometres, Elin had said. Not counting the time spent in crossing rivers we were now averaging a bone-jarring twenty-five kilometres an hour – too fast for comfort in this country – and I estimated we would get to the main Sprengisandur track in about four hours. It actually took six hours because some of the rivers were bastards.
In reaching the Sprengisandur track we had crossed the watershed and all the rivers from now on would be flowing south and west instead of north and east. We hit the track at eight-thirty, and I said, ‘Breakfast. Climb in the back and get something ready.’
‘You’re not stopping?’
‘Christ, no! Kennikin will have been on the move for hours. There’s no way of knowing how close he is and I’ve no urgent inclination to find out the hard way. Bread and cheese and beer will do fine.’
So we ate on the move and stopped only once, at ten o’clock, to fill up the tank from the last full jerrycan. While we were doing that up popped our friend of the previous day, the US Navy helicopter. It came from the north this time, not very low, and floated over us without appearing to pay us much attention.
I watched it fly south, and Elin said, ‘I’m puzzled about that.’
‘So am I,’ I said.
‘Not in the same way that I am,’ she said. ‘American military aircraft don’t usually overfly the country.’ She was frowning.
‘Now you come to mention it, that is odd.’ There’s a certain amount of tension in Iceland about the continuing American military presence at Keflavik. A lot of Icelanders take the view that it’s an imposition and who can blame them? The American authorities are quite aware of this tension and try to minimize it, and the American Navy in Iceland tries to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Flaunting military aircraft in Icelandic skies was certainly
