at over four hundred yards with just one shot.
He was a professional all right, but his name wasn’t 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 didn’t 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 Joe’s automatic pistol into the waistband of my trousers, unloading it first so I didn’t 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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t 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 he’d 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 Fleet’s 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 didn’t, 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 didn’t 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 didn’t think he’d 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. ‘Kennikin’s not far behind; let’s move.’
I set out towards the Land-Rover at a dead run, holding Elin’s 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 we’d 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 it’s a law of nature that the ferry is always on the other side when you arrive at the water’s edge. But that wouldn’t 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 don’t recommend it for those with queasy stomachs who have to cross in a high wind.
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