Read Online Operation Stranglehold by Dan J. Marlowe - Free Book Online
Authors: Dan J. Marlowe
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I’ll have a friend call her.”
I gave the contents of the station wagon a fast check. Everything was there. I climbed in and gestured to Julio to open the warehouse overhead door. I drove out into the alley with brother and sister waving goodbye to me.
With free access to the warehouse made possible by Consuelo, I wondered what part Julio played in Croswell Industries’ annual inventory losses at the Madrid branch office. Still, Julio had the appearance of a reasonable man. He would undoubtedly keep his pilferage down to a reasonable figure, something Sam Morgan could cope with on the books.
I drove back to the hotel.
The prisoner transfer took place on Wednesdays, and we were already into the first hour of Tuesday.
I found a side-street parking place near the hotel, locked up the Opel, and rejoined Hazel.
• • •
We left for Zaragosa thirty minutes after sunrise.
If we had no problems on the road, we could reach the spot I had picked out on the map with enough daylight left to set up for Wednesday’s action.
It was difficult getting out of Madrid unscathed. Enough early-morning commuters crowded the streets in their cars trying to avoid the later high-density traffic, that they created miniature bottlenecks themselves. Luckily, we were heading north out of the city proper while the suburbanites were streaming in. I had to dodge only an occasional impatient commuter who ventured onto my side of the road.
Traffic thinned beyond the outskirts. The highway was well marked with the illustrated, international road symbols used in Europe. It made the route easy to follow. The countryside was mostly flat and dry-looking with a ridge of low mountains paralleling our course to the north. The sky was cloudless, and the area strikingly resembled the American southwest, with a network of irrigation ditches criss-crossing fields where green sprouts showed.
Zaragosa was a run of just over 200 miles. We made it in time for lunch. I’d kept the speedometer needle right on the 85 kilometer per hour mark. Fifty miles an hour was all the strain I wanted to put on the overloaded station wagon.
We ate at a provincial, two-level restaurant called the Bodegas Aragonese. It was dark and cool with gourds and bunches of garlic and peppers hanging from ceiling beams. Hazel practiced her Spanish on the smiling waitress. She even managed to order me a bottle of chilled, refreshing beer.
We took the noon special which consisted of a crisp, antipasto-like salad, eggs and Majorcan ham, and tender veal stew. The bill, including a bottle of red wine and the everpresent hard bread, amounted to eighty-six American cents each. A man could get spoiled on that kind of eating for that kind of price.
Zaragosa was beginning to close down for the siesta period when we drove out of it. We wound our way through narrow streets to the Puente del Piedra spanning the Ebro River, and then took Highway 240 northeast toward Huesca.
Gradually the nature of the countryside changed. The snow-capped Pyrenees appeared dimly in the distance. We began to climb in earnest, and I kept our speed down so the burdened Opel wouldn’t overheat.
Beyond Huesca the road became hilly and winding and showed signs of neglect. We drove through five short tunnels in ten miles and negotiated climbing, hairpin turns. Purple gorges and sparkling waterfalls abounded.
An hour before mountain sunset, we reached a roadside village looking down upon an emerald blue lake. I stopped and checked the map. We were seven miles and a thousand feet below the border outpost from which Karl Erikson and Walter Croswell would be vanned tomorrow.
I circled back south of town and parked the Opel off the roadway. Hazel helped me stake down the tent. We changed to heavier clothing to minimize the effect of a cold mist which was forming at the crest of the hill and moving downward toward us.
“I’m glad we’re ready to get started,” Hazel said, as she deftly stirred the contents of four
I gave the contents of the station wagon a fast check. Everything was there. I climbed in and gestured to Julio to open the warehouse overhead door. I drove out into the alley with brother and sister waving goodbye to me.
With free access to the warehouse made possible by Consuelo, I wondered what part Julio played in Croswell Industries’ annual inventory losses at the Madrid branch office. Still, Julio had the appearance of a reasonable man. He would undoubtedly keep his pilferage down to a reasonable figure, something Sam Morgan could cope with on the books.
I drove back to the hotel.
The prisoner transfer took place on Wednesdays, and we were already into the first hour of Tuesday.
I found a side-street parking place near the hotel, locked up the Opel, and rejoined Hazel.
• • •
We left for Zaragosa thirty minutes after sunrise.
If we had no problems on the road, we could reach the spot I had picked out on the map with enough daylight left to set up for Wednesday’s action.
It was difficult getting out of Madrid unscathed. Enough early-morning commuters crowded the streets in their cars trying to avoid the later high-density traffic, that they created miniature bottlenecks themselves. Luckily, we were heading north out of the city proper while the suburbanites were streaming in. I had to dodge only an occasional impatient commuter who ventured onto my side of the road.
Traffic thinned beyond the outskirts. The highway was well marked with the illustrated, international road symbols used in Europe. It made the route easy to follow. The countryside was mostly flat and dry-looking with a ridge of low mountains paralleling our course to the north. The sky was cloudless, and the area strikingly resembled the American southwest, with a network of irrigation ditches criss-crossing fields where green sprouts showed.
Zaragosa was a run of just over 200 miles. We made it in time for lunch. I’d kept the speedometer needle right on the 85 kilometer per hour mark. Fifty miles an hour was all the strain I wanted to put on the overloaded station wagon.
We ate at a provincial, two-level restaurant called the Bodegas Aragonese. It was dark and cool with gourds and bunches of garlic and peppers hanging from ceiling beams. Hazel practiced her Spanish on the smiling waitress. She even managed to order me a bottle of chilled, refreshing beer.
We took the noon special which consisted of a crisp, antipasto-like salad, eggs and Majorcan ham, and tender veal stew. The bill, including a bottle of red wine and the everpresent hard bread, amounted to eighty-six American cents each. A man could get spoiled on that kind of eating for that kind of price.
Zaragosa was beginning to close down for the siesta period when we drove out of it. We wound our way through narrow streets to the Puente del Piedra spanning the Ebro River, and then took Highway 240 northeast toward Huesca.
Gradually the nature of the countryside changed. The snow-capped Pyrenees appeared dimly in the distance. We began to climb in earnest, and I kept our speed down so the burdened Opel wouldn’t overheat.
Beyond Huesca the road became hilly and winding and showed signs of neglect. We drove through five short tunnels in ten miles and negotiated climbing, hairpin turns. Purple gorges and sparkling waterfalls abounded.
An hour before mountain sunset, we reached a roadside village looking down upon an emerald blue lake. I stopped and checked the map. We were seven miles and a thousand feet below the border outpost from which Karl Erikson and Walter Croswell would be vanned tomorrow.
I circled back south of town and parked the Opel off the roadway. Hazel helped me stake down the tent. We changed to heavier clothing to minimize the effect of a cold mist which was forming at the crest of the hill and moving downward toward us.
“I’m glad we’re ready to get started,” Hazel said, as she deftly stirred the contents of four
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